Programmer Musings

Hi,

I enjoyed your article comparing the Perl interactive debugger to print statements.
Both are valuable tools, and I also prefer print statements.
My first approach to print statements was:
if ($d) { print "DEBUG sub xyz: \$myvar is $myvar\n" }
This proved to be too much typing, so I created a CPAN module to make debugging easier and quicker.
d '$myvar'
I thought you might be interested. Details are below:

The CPAN module Debug::Statements provides an easy way to insert and enable/disable print statements for debugging.

The d() function prints the name of your variable, its value, and your subroutine name. The implementation been optimized to minimize programmer keystrokes.

Sample code:

                my $myvar = 'some value';

                my @list = ('zero', 1, 'two', "3");

                my %hash = ('one' => 2, 'three' => 4);

                use Debug::Statements;

                my $d=1;

                d "Hello world";

                d '$myvar';

                d '@list %hash';

Produces this output:

                DEBUG sub mysub:  Hello world

                DEBUG sub mysub:  $myvar = 'some value'

                DEBUG sub mysub:  @list = [

                  'zero',

                  1,

                  'two',

                  '3'

                ]

                DEBUG sub mysub:  %hash = {

                  'one' => 2,

                  'three' => 4

                }

Many options are available to customize the output.
Full documentation can be found here: https://metacpan.org/pod/Debug::Statements