I use this code a lot when I want a quick and easy removable way to look at the contents of objects of classes I'm developing, and to be able to look at other data-structures as well.

Just add the code below to your main program, and you can do the following:

my $foo = new Foo;
$foo->dump; # dumps automatically to STDERR
print $foo->dump;  #dumps to STDOUT
print FOO $foo->dump;  # dumps to filehandle FOO
[download]

or, if you don't have objects but want to quickly dump a data-structure:

a->dump( $foo );   # dumps automatically to STDERR
print a->dump( $foo );  #dumps to STDOUT
print FOO a->dump( $foo ); # dumps to filehandle FOO
[download]

I wonder whether it would make sense to make a "dump" pragma for this and upload to CPAN.

sub UNIVERSAL::dump {

# Obtain the object / class
# Make sure that we have Data::Dumper
# Return Dumper output if not in void context
# Send Dumper output to STDERR otherwise

    my $self = shift;
    require Data::Dumper;
    return Data::Dumper::Dumper( @_ ? @_ : $self ) if defined wantarra
+y;
    print STDERR Data::Dumper::Dumper( @_ ? @_ : $self );
} #UNIVERSAL::dump
[download]