/ 
Acme-MetaSyntactic-1.015
River stage two • 63 direct dependents • 65 total dependents
/ meta

NAME

meta - A simple front-end to Acme::MetaSyntactic

SYNOPSIS

meta [ --whitespace|ws ] [ --help ] [ --version ] [ --remote ] [ --check ] [ --sources ] [ --category category ] theme[/category] [ count ]

DESCRIPTION

meta is a simple front-end to Acme::MetaSyntactic.

A few examples should make it easy to understand what it does and how it works:

$ meta
baz
$ meta batman
powie
$ meta donmartin 3
kloong
thoof_foing
weeooweeeoooo
$ meta -ws browser 4
arachne netscape voyager w3m

In short, the default theme is foo, the default count is 1, the default separator is $/, but you can replace it by whitespace with --ws.

COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS

The following command-line options are available:

Metasyntactic options

--whitespace, --ws

Print all items on a single line, separated by space.

--remote

Fetch the remote list (if available) and print it.

--check

Fetch the remote list (if available) and print only the differences betwen the current list and the remote list (items are prefixed by + and -).

Option added by Abigail.

The output of this option is affected by the --whitespace option.

--category category

Only select items in the given category (for Acme::MetaSyntactic::MultiList subclasses). If not given, use the default category.

Silently fallbacks to the default if the category doesn't exist.

Another way to ask for a specific category is to skip the --category option and directly ask for theme/category. Note that you cannot use both calling conventions simultaneously.

Informative options

The program will exit if any of these options is selected. However, these options can be combined.

--themes

Print the list of available themes.

--sources

Print the URLs used by a remote list.

--version

Print version information.

--help

Print a short help message.

SUCCESS STORIES

meta is the script of choice for a new generation of hackers. Here are a few comments from satisfied users:

  • Acme::MetaSyntactic makes me more productive when I have to write regression tests for my Perl modules. No more do I spend time looking for variable names! It simply changed my life.

    -- Rafael Garcia-Suarez, pumpking, used AMS when writing tests for Sub::Identify.

  • Acme::MetaSyntactic gave names for regression tests in the Perl core

    See https://github.com/Perl/perl5/commit/adc51b978ed1b2e9d4512c9bfa80386ac917d05a.

  • Your module has been a wonderful timesaver for me. How much time I used to spend on thinking about good and meaningful variable names, and now I have them at the snap of a finger!

    -- Gisbert W. Selke

  • [...] with the help of Acme::MetaSyntatic I've been able to do some rudimentary code generation techniques that save me a lot of time without much outlay.

    -- Mark Fowler

    http://blog.twoshortplanks.com/2010/07/03/holy_acceleration/

  • When writing example applications, I almost always use variable names such as foo and bar. This gets boring, and it easily confuse the reader. Especially when I need to use more variables.

    -- Gabor Szabo

    http://perlmaven.com/acme-metasyntactic

EXAMPLES OF USE

Ever needed to debug with the help of a few print() statements? Simply map some keystrokes to insert a warning where you want it. With meta, you will never need to think about what write in the string argument:

nmap _wa :r!meta donmartin<CR>iwarn"<Esc>A";<Esc>==

(This mapping kindly given by Rafael Garcia-Suarez.)

AUTHOR

Philippe "BooK" Bruhat, <book@cpan.org>.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2005-2006 Philippe 'BooK' Bruhat, All Rights Reserved.

LICENSE

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.