PPI::Normal3pm

register $function => $layer, ...

The "register" method is used by normalization method providers to tell the normalization engines which functions need to be run, and in which layer they apply.

Provide a set of key/value pairs, where the key is the full name of the function (in string form), and the value is the layer (see description of the layers above) in which it should be run.

Returns true if all functions are registered, or "undef" on error.

new

  my $level_1 = PPI::Normal->new;
  my $level_2 = PPI::Normal->new(2);

Creates a new normalization object, to which Document objects can be passed to be normalized.

Of course, what you probably REALLY want is just to call PPI::Document's "normalize" method.

Takes an optional single parameter of the normalisation layer to use, which at this time can be either "1" or "2".

Returns a new "PPI::Normal" object, or "undef" on error.

process

The "process" method takes anything that can be converted to a PPI::Document (object, SCALAR ref, filename), loads it and applies the normalisation process to the document.

Returns a PPI::Document::Normalized object, or "undef" on error.

Layer 1 - Insignificant Data Removal

The basic step common to all normalization, layer 1 scans through the Document and removes all whitespace, comments, POD, and anything else that returns false for its "significant" method.

It also checks each Element and removes known-useless sub-element metadata such as the Element's physical position in the file.

Layer 2 - Significant Element Removal

After the removal of the insignificant data, Layer 2 removed larger, more complex, and superficially "significant" elements, that can be removed for the purposes of normalisation.

Examples from this layer include pragmas, now-useless statement separators (since the PDOM tree is holding statement elements), and several other minor bits and pieces.

Layer 3 - TO BE COMPLETED

This version of the forward-port of the Perl::Compare functionality to the 0.900+ API of PPI only implements Layer 1 and 2 at this time.