Lastest experimental CPerl mode changes

[Ville Skyttä]

On Tuesday 19 June 2007, robert delius royar wrote:
> In a recent package update from the experimental packages perl-modes and
> prog-modes, something has changed in CPerl mode that affects
> font-lock syntax coloring and autocompletion of program blocks.  The
> Changelog does not refer to any changes in the files except to sync
> cperl.el with upstream 2.53 and change the Makefile version in
> perl-modes and to Use `condition-case' instead of `ignore-errors' in
> rpm-spec-mode.el.

The prog-modes changes are unrelated to the cperl-mode ones.  cperl-mode.el 
contains the full upstream change log, maybe something can be found there.  
The previous cperl-mode.el in XEmacs packages tree was 5.0 IIRC.

Which XEmacs version do you use?

> First, syntax hilighting appears to become confused when existing lines
> are edited--especially when the line contains unterminated strings.  The
> confusion shows as incorrect coloring of symbols on the following line.

I can't reproduce with 21.5.28.  When starting editing with the "m" 
(your "beforechange" case), fontification does momentarily get confused - I 
gather it's interpreting "m" as the beginning of an m/.../ operator.  For me 
it normalizes immediately when typing the following "y", and unterminated 
strings confuse it only while being unterminated.  After the trailing " and a 
semicolon, everything's back to normal here.

> I use Perl to write a
> good deal of dynamic web pages.  These often contain html tags.  CPerl
> mode now throws an error (available through `view-lossage') whenever I
> try to add an html tag:
> End of `< ... >' string/RE not found: (syntax-error Unbalanced parentheses)

Note that it doesn't actually throw an error - it catches it and reports with 
`message'.  Anyway, could you post an exact recipe (file, edit position, what 
is to be inserted) how to reproduce this?  I didn't manage to trigger it in a 
quick try.

> Second, the new CPerl wants to complete control structures I type.  That
> is new behavior.  I cannot find a way to turn off this help.  I would
> not mind this that much except it triggers the error
> nil not defined.
> Precede char by C-q to avoid expansion

I cannot reproduce this either (neither the autocompletion (maybe some 
cperl-electric-* setting?) nor the error).  Do you have any cperl-* 
customizations in your custom.el or init.el?  Have you tried with 
xemacs -vanilla?