Check out YAML. It's a fast data serialization language that is frequently a better alternative to Data::Dumper. I suspect the latter is still around mostly due to inertia. You can also read about YAML at the YAML web site.

On the other hand, I don't know that YAML will let me do this:

print Data::Dumper->Dump(
    [$foo,$bar,$baz],
    [qw(*foo *bar *baz)]
);
[download]

That last bit will Dumper variables with the labels you assign (instead of the usual $VAR1, $VAR2, etc. labels). It's pretty nifty.

Cheers,
Ovid

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