Hey Guys!

I am in the process of getting back in to Perl after being away from programming as a whole for quite a while. I thought this might be a good time to learn how to use the built-in debugger. Previously I ran 'EPIC' inside 'Eclipse', but ended up very much disliking that IDE. Therefore this time around I intend to write programmes in a text editor called 'EditPad Pro' and then employ the native Perl debugger as necessary. Unfortunately I have run in to some problems straight out of the gate,

As a test I started with the simplest of all one-line programmes, saved as 'debug_test.pl':

Next, at the console window I used the command:

This is the output I received from Perl:

Loading DB routines from perl5db.pl version 1.51
Editor support available.

Enter h or 'h h' for help, or 'perldoc perldebug' for more help.

<main::(test.plx:1):     print "hello";
Unable to get Terminal Size. The Win32 GetConsoleScreenBufferInfo call
+ didn't work. The COLUMNS and LINES environment variables didn't work
+.
at C:/StrawberryPERL/perl/vendor/lib/Term/ReadLine/readline.pm line 41
+0.
 at C:/StrawberryPERL/perl/vendor/lib/Term/ReadKey.pm line 462.
        Term::ReadKey::GetTerminalSize(GLOB(0x28025f4)) called at C:/S
+trawberryPERL/perl/vendor/lib/Term/ReadLine/readline.pm line 410
        readline::get_window_size called at C:/StrawberryPERL/perl/ven
+dor/lib/Term/ReadLine/readline.pm line 1114
        readline::init called at C:/StrawberryPERL/perl/vendor/lib/Ter
+m/ReadLine/readline.pm line 208
        require Term/ReadLine/readline.pm called at C:/StrawberryPERL/
+perl/vendor/lib/Term/ReadLine/Perl.pm line 63
        eval {...} called at C:/StrawberryPERL/perl/vendor/lib/Term/Re
+adLine/Perl.pm line 63
        Term::ReadLine::Perl::new("Term::ReadLine", "perldb", GLOB(0x2
+8b27bc), GLOB(0x28025f4)) called at C:/StrawberryPERL/perl/lib/perl5d
+b.pl line 6868
        DB::setterm() called at C:/StrawberryPERL/perl/lib/perl5db.pl 
+line 1849
        DB::_DB__read_next_cmd(undef) called at C:/StrawberryPERL/perl
+/lib/perl5db.pl line 2786
        DB::DB called at test.plx line 1
SetConsoleMode failed, LastError=|6| at C:/StrawberryPERL/perl/vendor/
+lib/Term/ReadKey.pm line 346.
 at C:/StrawberryPERL/perl/vendor/lib/Term/ReadLine/readline.pm line 1
+581.
        readline::readline("  DB<1> ") called at C:/StrawberryPERL/per
+l/vendor/lib/Term/ReadLine/Perl.pm line 11
        Term::ReadLine::Perl::readline(Term::ReadLine::Perl=ARRAY(0x61
+1b1c), "  DB<1> ") called at C:/StrawberryPERL/perl/lib/perl5db.pl li
+ne 7367
        DB::readline("  DB<1> ") called at C:/StrawberryPERL/perl/lib/
+perl5db.pl line 1858
        DB::_DB__read_next_cmd(undef) called at C:/StrawberryPERL/perl
+/lib/perl5db.pl line 2786
        DB::DB called at test.plx line 1
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I am using a fresh install of the newest Strawberry Perl (32Bit), which is release 5.26.2.1. I run this in Windows 7 (64Bit), patched with the latest updates. For what it is worth the same error occurs if I try the 64Bit edition of Strawberry Perl either. Other than this, Perl programmes themselves run without any problem. It is only when I try to execute them under the native debugger that I encounter an issue.

Can any of you chaps suggest a solution for this?

A quick search of the forum came up with a very similar issue reported by 'Ovid' way back in 2007. However that gentleman encountered the error while employing something called 'Prove', which I have never come across before and is certainly not something I am using myself. I think most of the suggestions in that thread related to using 'Prove', so I do not know how to apply them in my own far simpler situation.

UPDATE:

Well... A degree more persistence with the search function, both here and over at Google suggested another approach to sort this out that was not centred on 'Prove'; create an environment variable 'TERM' and set its value to 'dumb' (case sensitive for each I believe). After doing so perl -d debug_test.pl began working like a charm!!! So... I guess that is the fix. Which is good of course, but I have no idea why I couldn't find that result the first half-dozen times I searched for an answer... Weird indeed. Still. The jobs a good'un--problem solved!