App::PerlGlue

Glue messy text into useful shapes.

PerlGlue is a command-line tool for connecting real-world text formats: logs, CSV/TSV, JSON Lines, and plain text.

It is designed for the moment when simple one-liners stop being simple.

Philosophy

sed when it’s simple.
awk when it’s tabular.
perlglue when it gets messy.

PerlGlue is not a replacement for sed or awk.

Instead, it fills the gap when:

• your one-liner becomes unreadable
• your data stops being clean text
• you need to move between formats (CSV ⇄ JSON ⇄ logs)
• you start wishing you could just write Perl

Why PerlGlue?

1. Real regex power

Perl’s regex engine handles complex patterns cleanly:

perlglue replace 's/(?<=user=)\w+/REDACTED/g' app.log

2. Correct CSV/TSV handling

Unlike awk -F,, PerlGlue handles quoted fields properly:

name,email,note
Alice,a@example.com,"hello, world"

perlglue pick users.csv --csv name,email

3. Native Perl expressions

Write filters in Perl, not another DSL:

perlglue where access.log '$_ =~ /ERROR/ && $_ =~ /timeout/'
perlglue jsonl logs.jsonl '$_->{status} >= 500'

4. Works across formats

Glue different data formats together:

perlglue csv users.csv --to jsonl \
  | perlglue jsonl --where '$_->{age} >= 30' \
  | perlglue template '{{name}} <{{email}}>'

5. One tool instead of many

Instead of combining:

• sed
• awk
• jq
• custom scripts

Use a single, consistent interface.

Relationship to JQ::Lite

PerlGlue is not a jq clone.

• JQ::Lite → querying JSON
• PerlGlue → preparing, transforming, and connecting data

Use JQ::Lite when working with clean JSON:

jq-lite '.users[] | select(.age > 30)' users.json

Use PerlGlue when your data is messy or not JSON yet:

perlglue from-csv users.csv --to jsonl \
  | jq-lite '.[] | select(.age > 30)'

When to use what

| Tool | Use case | | -------- | ------------------------------ | | sed | simple text substitution | | awk | simple column/field processing | | jq-lite | structured JSON queries | | perlglue | messy, mixed, real-world data |

Examples

# filter logs
perlglue lines access.log --where '$_ =~ /ERROR/'

# pick fields from CSV
perlglue pick users.csv --csv name,email

# convert CSV → JSONL
perlglue convert users.csv --to jsonl

# template output
perlglue template users.csv 'Hello, {{name}}'

# safe rename
perlglue rename 's/\s+/_/g' *.txt

Status

Early-stage. Expect rapid changes.

License

Artistic License 2.0