perljump.vim

Vim plugin for jumping to Perl subroutine definitions, even when not using fully qualified names.

When I started at my job, I was frustrated every time I saw an unqualified call to a function in another module. I always had to grep that function to find the module where it was defined, then open that module and then finally search for the function. This plugin does it all for you automatically. With perljump, you are always only two key presses away from seeing a function definition.

Installation

Use your favourite Vim plugin manager. For example with vim-plug:

Plug 'xxdavid/perljump.vim'

Configuration

To get the plugin working, you have to set one variable in your .vimrc (or neovim's init.vim). The variable is called g:perljump_inc and it's an array of directories containing Perl modules. For example:

let g:perljump_inc = [
 \       '/Library/Perl/5.18/darwin-thread-multi-2level',
 \       '/Library/Perl/5.18 /Network/Library/Perl/5.18/darwin-thread-multi-2level',
 \       '/Network/Library/Perl/5.18',
 \       '/Library/Perl/Updates/5.18.4',
 \       '/System/Library/Perl/5.18',
 \       '/System/Library/Perl/Extras/5.18',
 \]

You can use perl -e 'print join("\n", @INC);' to determine your Perl include directories or perldoc -l MyModule to find path to a particular module. You can also create the variable dynamically based on project you are in (eg. to include your project modules).

Usage

The plugin defines two public functions JumpToDef and ShowPod. The names are pretty self-descriptive, JumpToDef jumps to definition of a function your cursor is on, ShowPod creates a split window with Perl Pod for that function.

It is useful to create mappings in your .vimrc for these functions, like this:

autocmd FileType perl noremap gd :call JumpToDef()<CR>
autocmd FileType perl noremap gp :call ShowPod()<CR>

How does it work?

There is a very simple heuristics involved in searching for the definition of a function. If the function call uses fully qualified name, then module directories are searched for this module (in order of the g:perljump_inc array). If the call isn't fully qualified, the current file is searched and if the function isn't found there, all included modules (via use MyModule) in the current files are searched for this function. No robust parsing is performed, only simple regex search so it doesn't have to work in all cases. Also, it probably works only with Perl 5.

Notes

• needs perl in your PATH
• doesn't work with class methods

Contribute

If the plugin doesn't work in your case or you have any other improvement, feel free to submit a pull request!