A problem I had with using Data::Dumper for persistance was that it took so much RAM when used with a big datastructure because it created the whole outputstring in RAM. (Storable is a little bit better). In the moment I'm just working at a program that takes about 500-800MB RAM (under Win2k or Solaris 32 bit) with one main datastructure (LDAP-LDIF-like datastructure). If I want to print such a Datastructure with Data::Dumper to a file, there always comes an Out-of-memory-Error.

But for small datastructures, it really is a great help!

Best regards,
perl -le "s==*F=e=>y~\*martinF~stronat~=>s~[^\w]~~g=>chop,print"