hmm.. thanks for the interest atcroft. i think i made some progress. the key is i have to require the script i am trying to debug. and also i had to add a sub called showfile().

this stuff is not documented which is sad because it means i have to read the DB.pm source (ack gasp) and understand perl internals and i don't know perl internals and i am afraid of perl internals.

anyway this is still very pre beta beginning new, but this seems to work (yeah!):

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
    

package PerlDebugger;

use DB; 
@ISA = qw( DB );
  

sub new {
   my $type = shift;
   my $self = {};
   bless $self, $type;
}   

sub startDebugger   {
   my $self = shift;
   my $sourceCode = shift;

   eval( "require \"$sourceCode\";" );

   $self->register();
   print ">>" . $self->loadfile( $sourceCode, 3 ) . "<<\n";
   print ">>" . $self->ready() . "<<\n";
  
   print "\n>>";
   print $DB::filename;
   print "<<\n"; 
}     

sub showfile   {
   print "showfile\n";
}
    
sub quit   {
   my $self = shift;
   $self->done();
}    
    
package main;
use strict;

my $code = "perlbot.pl";
  
my $dbgr = PerlDebugger->new();
$dbgr->startDebugger( $code );
[download]

i take it you use vim, atcroft? if i ever actually finish this i'll post it up on vim.sf.net and probably some other places too.

thanks.