How can I script vim to run perltidy on a buffer?

Question

At my current job, we have coding-style standards that are different from the ones I normally follow. Fortunately, we have a canned RC file for perltidy that I can

Answer 1

Instead of creating a new keyboard shortcut, how about replacing the meaning of the = command which is already in people's finger memory for indenting stuff? Yes, perlcritic does more than just indent but when you use perlcritic anyways, then you probably don't want to go back to the inferior "just indent" = command. So lets overwrite it!

filetype plugin indent on
autocmd FileType perl setlocal equalprg=perltidy

And now we can use = just like before but with the added functionality of perlcritic that goes beyond just indenting lines:

==   run perlcritic on the current line
5==  run perlcritic on five lines
=i{  Re-indent the 'inner block', i.e. the contents of the block
=a{  Re-indent 'a block', i.e. block and containing braces
=2a{ Re-indent '2 blocks', i.e. this block and containing block
gg=G run perlcritic on the entire buffer

And the best part is, that you don't have to learn any new shortcuts but can continue using the ones you already used with more power. :)