caller

See the current Perl documentation for caller.

Here is our local, out-dated (pre-5.6) version:

caller - get context of the current subroutine call

caller EXPR

caller

Returns the context of the current subroutine call. In scalar context, returns the caller's package name if there is a caller, that is, if we're in a subroutine or eval() or require(), and the undefined value otherwise. In list context, returns

    ($package, $filename, $line) = caller;

With EXPR, it returns some extra information that the debugger uses to print a stack trace. The value of EXPR indicates how many call frames to go back before the current one.

    ($package, $filename, $line, $subroutine,
     $hasargs, $wantarray, $evaltext, $is_require) = caller($i);

Here $subroutine may be "(eval)" if the frame is not a subroutine call, but an eval(). In such a case additional elements $evaltext and $is_require are set: $is_require is true if the frame is created by a require or use statement, $evaltext contains the text of the eval EXPR statement. In particular, for a eval BLOCK statement, $filename is "(eval)", but $evaltext is undefined. (Note also that each use statement creates a require frame inside an eval EXPR) frame.

Furthermore, when called from within the DB package, caller returns more detailed information: it sets the list variable @DB::args to be the arguments with which the subroutine was invoked.

Be aware that the optimizer might have optimized call frames away before caller() had a chance to get the information. That means that caller(N) might not return information about the call frame you expect it do, for N > 1. In particular, @DB::args might have information from the previous time caller() was called.