Sort Your Perl Imports

Olaf Alders added a sorting feature to perlimports, the Perl module that tidies use statements, bringing it in line with import tidiers such as Go's goimports. The new --sort flag alpha-sorts contiguous imports, hoists feature and strict pragmas out of the sorted list, keeps comments attached to their imports, and sorts List::Util import arguments as before. The tool can preview the result on stdout, rewrite files in place with -i, or report needed changes via --lint and exit non-zero for CI use.

Sort Your Perl Imports Table of Contents I’ve had some time to revisit perlimports https://metacpan.org/pod/App::perlimports , and aside from fixing some bugs, I’ve finally added sorting https://metacpan.org/pod/perlimports -%5Bno-%5Dsort . This brings it more in line with import tidiers https://pkg.go.dev/golang.org/x/tools/cmd/goimports in other languages. If you like to see your list of imported libraries in alpha-sorted order, you’re in the right place. If you’d like them sorted in order of width, you know where the door is "Library" https://www.flickr.com/photos/30668772@N02/3910635234 by Ellen Forsyth https://www.flickr.com/photos/ellf/ is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en . Let’s see it in action. I asked claude to come up with a convoluted example. before-and-after Before and after Contains LLM-generated content not written by Olaf Before: package Report; use warnings; o.o is this row an object ^ < or a plain number? use Scalar::Util qw blessed ; use Carp qw croak ; fatal, with a caller-aware stack use feature 'signatures'; use List::Util qw sum0 max ; use strict; use POSIX qw floor ; round takings down to whole dollars sub total $class, @rows { croak 'need rows' unless @rows; my @amounts = map { blessed $ ? $ - amount : $ } @rows; return floor sum0 @amounts , max @amounts ; } 1; After: package Report; use warnings; use feature 'signatures'; use strict; use Carp qw croak ; fatal, with a caller-aware stack use List::Util qw max sum0 ; use POSIX qw floor ; round takings down to whole dollars o.o is this row an object ^ < or a plain number? use Scalar::Util qw blessed ; sub total $class, @rows { croak 'need rows' unless @rows; my @amounts = map { blessed $ ? $ - amount : $ } @rows; return floor sum0 @amounts , max @amounts ; } 1; What happened: - the feature and strict pragmas were hoisted out of the list below - they were not sorted, but I’m ok with this because pragma order can matter - the remaining contiguous imports were alpha-sorted - the List::Util import list was sorted, but that’s pre-existing behaviour - comments remain attached to their imports running-it-from-the-command-line Running it from the command line We can preview the sorted result on stdout: perlimports --sort --filename Report.pm package Report; use warnings; use feature 'signatures'; use strict; use Carp qw croak ; fatal, with a caller-aware stack use List::Util qw max sum0 ; use POSIX qw floor ; round takings down to whole dollars o.o is this row an object ^ < or a plain number? use Scalar::Util qw blessed ; sub total $class, @rows { croak 'need rows' unless @rows; my @amounts = map { blessed $ ? $ - amount : $ } @rows; return floor sum0 @amounts , max @amounts ; } 1; We can rewrite the file in place no output; it edits Report.pm and exits 0 : perlimports --sort -i Report.pm We can check without rewriting — --lint reports what would be changed and then exits non-zero if anything needs tidying. So, it’s helpful in CI. perlimports --sort --lint --filename Report.pm ❌ Report.pm includes are not sorted @@ -4,5 +3,0 @@ - - o.o is this row an object - ^ < or a plain number? -use Scalar::Util qw blessed ; -use Carp qw croak ; fatal, with a caller-aware stack @@ -9,0 +5,3 @@ +use strict; + +use Carp qw croak ; fatal, with a caller-aware stack @@ -14 +11,0 @@ -use strict; @@ -15,0 +13,4 @@ + + o.o is this row an object + ^ < or a plain number? +use Scalar::Util qw blessed ; ❌ List::Util import arguments need tidying at Report.pm line 10 @@ -10,4 +10 @@ -use List::Util qw +use List::Util qw max sum0 ; - sum0 - max - ; turning-it-on-in-perlimportstoml Turning it on in perlimports.toml perlimports.toml sort = true With sorting enabled in the config, we no longer need to pass the flag at the command line. This command still applies the sort: perlimports --filename Report.pm This is a first pass at this problem and I’m sure it does some things that people will hate and that I hadn’t considered. If you try it out and hate it, you have to let me know. Also, tell me on a scale of 1-10 how much you hate it, with 1 being “I threw up in my mouth a little” and 10 being “I wept”. Related posts: