Re: Does Emacs need two Perl modes?

[Corwin Brust <corwin@bru.st>]

On Sun, Jun 18, 2023 at 7:56 AM Jens Schmidt
<jschmidt4gnu@vodafonemail.de> wrote:
>
> On 2023-06-18  12:14, Peter Oliver wrote:
>
> > Does it still make sense for Emacs to include two different Perl modes?
> > Is it time to make cperl-mode the default, and to deprecate perl-mode?

I was thinking about this just yesterday while whipping up this rather
naive patch for cperl (adding class/method/ADJUST and async/await):
https://bpa.st/VPAW4

I agree with Po - it's better not to spin wheels on this.   If someone
comes along with a consolidation patch that might be able to make both
perl-mode and cperl-mode users happy I'm sure lots of Perlers will
want to talk about how that would be for us -- in the meanwhile I
think there are both lower hanging and juicer fruits to stretch for.

[snip]
> Why not leave `perl-mode' in self-maintenance mode as long as users are
> happy with it?

+1

> I won't say "no" when we talk about giving `cperl-mode' preference in
> `auto-mode-alist', though.

Wow, that'd be *nice*.  Well before I'd learned any elisp at all I had
learned to type (defaias 'perl-mode 'cperl-mode) to make a fresh Emacs
ready to use :D  (I like cperl for the same reason you don't, lol)
While I'd be completely in favor of putting cperl-mode into
auto-mode-alist, I'm not sure it's TRT.  My sense has been that
perl-mode is wired up by default specifically because it's the less
frills choice, and thus more likely to perform well on older and
underpowered systems.