/ 
WebDyne-3.006
/ wdlint

wdlint

NAME

wdlint - check Perl syntax in the __PERL__ section of a WebDyne file

SYNOPSIS

wdlint [PERL_OPTIONS] FILE

Description

The wdlint command checks the Perl syntax embedded in a WebDyne .psp file.

It does this by copying the source file to a temporary file, scanning until it finds the __PERL__ marker, then inserting a Perl shebang, use strict; , and a #line directive so any syntax errors reported by Perl refer back to the original source file and line numbers as closely as possible.

It then runs:

perl -c -w -x

against the temporary file and prints any warnings or syntax errors returned by Perl.

This utility is primarily useful for checking server-side Perl code in the __PERL__ section of a WebDyne page. It is not a full WebDyne page validator and it does not check the HTML structure, WebDyne compilation stages, or runtime behaviour of the page.

Options

wdlint does not implement its own option parser. The last argument is treated as the source file to check. Any earlier arguments are passed directly through to Perl when running the syntax check.

In practice this means:

  • Perl warnings are enabled by default via -w .

  • Perl syntax checking is enabled by default via -c .

  • Perl -x processing is enabled so Perl starts reading from the injected Perl section.

  • Any additional arguments before the file name are passed directly to Perl, for example -I include paths or other Perl switches.

Examples

# Sample psp file with deliberate error, save as check.psp
#
<start_html>
Hello World <? server_time() ?>
__PERL__

sub server_time {
    my 2==1; # Error here
}

# Check the embedded Perl syntax in a WebDyne page
#
$ wdlint check.psp
syntax error at check.psp line 6, near "my 2"
check.psp had compilation errors.

# Pass an include path through to Perl while checking syntax
#
$ wdlint -Ilib page.psp

Notes

Only the Perl code after the __PERL__ marker is linted. If a file contains no __PERL__ section, the command still constructs a temporary file and runs Perl with -x, but there may be little or nothing useful to validate.

The temporary file is removed after the Perl syntax check completes.

wdlint adds use strict; to the temporary file during checking, so code that only compiles without strict mode may fail under wdlint .

Because the command relies on Perl's own parser, it is a good tool for catching syntax mistakes early, but it will not detect WebDyne-specific logic errors, bad HTML, or problems that only appear when the page is compiled or rendered in a real request context.

Author

Andrew Speer mailto:andrew.speer@isolutions.com.au

LICENSE and COPYRIGHT

This file is part of WebDyne.

This software is copyright (c) 2026 by Andrew Speer mailto:andrew.speer@isolutions.com.au.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

Full license text is available at:

http://dev.perl.org/licenses/