ABOUT
perl4mIRC is a DLL for the mIRC chat client that allows a scripter to
execute Perl programs from mIRC's edit box and in mIRC's msl script
files.
Current version is 1.5012001 (for perl v5.12.x) [changelog|commitlog]
Previous versions may be found on GitHub.
DLLs built for perl v5.10.x are tagged as such.
The repository is hosted by GitHub and you're invited to fork it.
REQUIREMENTS
any version of mIRC (dev on v6.35)
Perl (dev and built for v5.12.1)
INSTALLATION
To install this script and DLL, to copy the files in this package into a
mIRC's directory and type...
/load -rs C:\[path\to\mirc]\perl.mrc
...to load the script file. This will run /perl_test to test the
installation.
USAGE & EXAMPLES
Use /perl <perl syntax> to execute Perl code. Several examples of this
and the embedded syntax are in perl.mrc. I'll explain some of the nifty
bits here...
STDOUT/STDERR
Somewhere near the top of perl.mrc, you should see the following lines:
; Standard input/output handling
on *:SIGNAL:PERL_STDOUT:if ($1 != $null) echo -a $1-
on *:SIGNAL:PERL_STDERR:if ($1 != $null) echo $color(info) -a $1-
Instead of redirecting all IO to the status window, perl4mIRC redirects
everything to signals which can then be used any way you see fit. The
defaults are reasonable but you can customize these if you're bored.
Inline Snippets
Midway through perl.mrc, you come upon the following alias...
alias perl_list_modules {
if $($use_perl,2) {
my @modules;
for my $module(keys %INC) {
if ($module =~ m[\.pm$]) {
$module =~ s|/|::|g;
$module =~ s|.pm$||;
}
push @modules, $module;
}
# Bring information back to mIRC in a var rather
# than using the mirc proc to /echo the results
mIRC->var('modules') = join(q[, ], sort {lc $a cmp lc $b} @modules);
}
echo -a Perl Modules: %modules
unset %modules
}
This bit of code pretty much summarizes the best of what perl4mIRC has to
offer.
The 'if $($use_perl,2) {' line starts our embedded perl snippet which ends
with the matching closing brace. In this example, we are simply sifting
through the list of loaded modules but any amount of code could be in one
of these sections.
In this example, you'll also notice our use of the var() method from the
mIRC package. This method provides both read and write access to the
variables defined within mIRC. Here, instead of printing out the list in
perl, we hand it back to mIRC and echo the result from there.
mIRC Commands
To access mIRC's internal commands, you have two options. You man call
them with the execute() method or directly. Here's an example of each:
; execute()
/perl mIRC->execute("/echo echo echo echo cho cho cho ho ho ho o o o");
; directly
/perl mIRC->echo("Mmmmm... Namespace hacking.");
mIRC Identifiers
To evaluate mIRC's internal identifiers, the current API provides an
evaluate(...) method. Usage is as follows:
; quick access to the clipboard's contents
/perl my $clip = mIRC->evaluate('$cb')
; prompt the user for information
/perl warn mIRC->evaluate('$?="This is a test"')
Please note that I haven't really smoothed the rough edges of this out and
may tweak it a little sometime in the future. This evaluate(...) method
will always work as it's currently documented, but there may be a better
way to interface this data in perl.
Foo4mIRC: The Power of the CPAN
At the very bottom, you'll see...
alias inlinec {
if $($use_perl,2) {
use Inline (C => <<'');
int add(int x, int y) { return x + y; }
int subtract(int x, int y) { return x - y; }
print "9 + 16 = " . add(9, 16) . "\n";
print "9 - 16 = " . subtract(9, 16) . "\n";
}
}
...yep, C. Inside mIRC. For this example, you'll need the Inline::C module
which may be installed from the CPAN shell. This bit of awesome isn't
perl4mIRC-specific, but is a great example of how powerful perl itself is.
A quick search on CPAN will bring you to several Inline modules that
evaluate ASM, Awk, Basic, C++, Guile, Java, Lua, Python, Ruby, Tcl, and
many other languages. See http://search.cpan.org/search?q=Inline for a
list of Inline modules.
Thanks to perl4mIRC and CPAN's library of awesome, you're really only
limited by your imagination.
Review
A few bullet points to review:
* You may access mIRC's variables with the var() method:
/perl warn mIRC->var('someval');
* You may even use the var() method as an lvalue to set the variables:
/perl mIRC->var('blahblah') = ucfirst reverse 'gnitset';
* All of mIRC's commands may be accessed via the execute() method:
/perl mIRC->execute("/echo This is a test");
* Or directly by name as methods like so:
/perl mIRC->echo("Yet another test.");
* Identifiers may be evaluated with the obviously named evaluate() method:
/perl printf 'You are using mIRC v%s', mIRC->evaluate('$version')
RELEASE INFORMATION
See CHANGES.txt
For future updates, check http://github.com/sanko/perl4mirc/ or the
project's website http://sankorobinson.com/perl4mirc/.
AUTHOR
The software provided was written by Sanko Robinson.
LICENSES
Perl4mIRC is released under the Perl/Artistic license. See LICENSE.txt for
a very legalese definition of what I'm talking about. To understand what
rights I claim to this code and how to handle derivative work, see the
Artistic 2.0 Notes.
All textual content is provided under the Creative Commons Attribution-
Share Alike 3.0 United States License as all documentation should.
Now that you're completely confused, you can ask me any time to clarify my
licensing choices.
TRADEMARK NOTICES
mIRC is a registered trademark of mIRC Co. Ltd.