in reply to Re^2: Hacking Debugger bugs connected to $^D
in thread Hacking Debugger bugs connected to $^D

I looked at the Perl debugger code some months ago with the idea that I could get ideas for a vague project of mine: I had the idea of possibly trying to use Perl and the Perl debugger to try to write a basic shell script debugger (at first, this did not seem completely crazy, I was able to use Perl to write a basic code profiler for another proprietary programming language), but I quickly gave up, it is just awful and way above and beyond my level of comprehension.

  • Comment on Re^3: Hacking Debugger bugs connected to $^D

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^4: Hacking Debugger bugs connected to $^D
by LanX (Saint) on Apr 24, 2013 at 21:59 UTC
    > it is just awful and way above and beyond my level of comprehension.

    Yeah it takes time! I admit that I was very frustrated at the beginning.

    This code seems to have grown out of a Perl4 predecessor, the basic structure must have been designed 15-20 years ago. It depends on some obscure perlguts.

    Mostly package vars, very long routines, nested flows, many AND-for-IF constructs, a bag of completely unknown features, wild package structures ( dumpValue lives in main!!! WTF ?)

    At least someone took the effort to re-document it with nested PODs (which OTOH doesn't facilitate refactoring at all)

    But mastering it gives a very powerful tool. And it's a key tool, we need to keep it running.

    Cheers Rolf

    ( addicted to the Perl Programming Language)

    UPDATE

    still talking about v1.30, haven't looked in the newest on yet.

[reply]
[d/l]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom