Re: Why --backup-and-modify-in-place in perltidy config?

Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net> writes:
> On 08/14/2016 04:38 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
>> I did a trial run following the current pgindent README procedure, and
>> noticed that the perltidy step left me with a pile of '.bak' files
>> littering the entire tree. This seems like a pretty bad idea because
>> a naive "git add ." would have committed them. It's evidently because
>> src/tools/pgindent/perltidyrc includes --backup-and-modify-in-place.

BTW, after experimenting with this, I did not find any way to get perltidy
to overwrite the original files without making a backup file.

> We should probably specify -bext='/', which would cause the backup files
> to be deleted unless an error occurred.

Really? That seems a bit magic, and it's certainly undocumented.

> Alternatively, we could just remove the in-place parameter and write a
> command that moved the new .tdy files over the original when perltidy
> was finished.

I was thinking about just removing all the .bak files afterwards, ie
automating the existing manual process. As long as we're making an
invocation script anyway, that's easy.

regards, tom lane