extend textpad for use as a multifunctional tool

Flink · Post by **Flink** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 8:23 am

I would like to use some functions of textpad in other programs like TortoiseCVS.
The only thing I need would be some command line paramters for textpad, so I could misuse it as a tool to compare two files and store the result in another file.

This would extend textpad to be a multifunctional tool useful to everyone who has to write command line scripts!

BenjiSmith · Post by **BenjiSmith** » Fri Mar 12, 2004 11:07 pm

This functionality has actually been available for many years.

It's a little known feature of TextPad called "perl".

In fact, it's become so popular that it's only available as a separate download from the main GUI version of TextPad (go to http://perl.org to check it out).

And also, due to its overwhelming popularity, it was invented several years before TextPad existed.

Flink · Post by **Flink** » Sat Mar 13, 2004 9:06 am

BenjiSmith wrote:This functionality has actually been available for many years.

It's a little known feature of TextPad called "perl".

In fact, it's become so popular that it's only available as a separate download from the main GUI version of TextPad (go to http://perl.org to check it out).

And also, due to its overwhelming popularity, it was invented several years before TextPad existed.

What do you mean?
- to use Perl instead of TextPad
- where to download a TextPad-version for commandline usage

ramonsky · Post by **ramonsky** » Mon Mar 15, 2004 11:05 am

I believe that BenjiSmith meant that you can use ANY scripting language for this purpose, and that he/she was merely expressing a personal preference for Perl.

Other languages equally up to the task are PHP, Python, and probably many, many more. PHP is my favorite as it has a most C-like syntax. (I find Perl code unreadable, but that's just me).

Jill

BenjiSmith · Post by **BenjiSmith** » Thu Mar 18, 2004 8:05 am

Flink wrote:What do you mean?
- to use Perl instead of TextPad
- where to download a TextPad-version for commandline usage

Well, TextPad is a text editor. It has lots of other nice features like regular expression search/replace, file diffs, keyboard macros, etc.

But if you take away the editor, and just use it a command-line tool, then what you have left is a scripting language. And there are already lots of nice scripting languages. It would be silly to turn TextPad into a scripting language when there are so many other good options (and when TextPad-as-scripting-language would probably fall short of the other scripting languages).

But, adding scripted macros to the editor UI, as everyone agrees, would be fantastic.

gracefool · Post by **gracefool** » Sat Mar 20, 2004 1:50 pm

BenjiSmith wrote:This functionality has actually been available for many years.

It's a little known feature of TextPad called "perl".

In fact, it's become so popular that it's only available as a separate download from the main GUI version of TextPad (go to http://perl.org to check it out).

And also, due to its overwhelming popularity, it was invented several years before TextPad existed.

lol