Hi

is there a comfortable and DRY way to dump variables?

I mean neither printing "$VAR1" nor having to repeat the name over and over again, and working with both kinds of variables?

For instance always writing:  print Data::Dumper->Dump([\@fontspec],['*fontspec']); is no fun.

I made this hack, which works quite fine so far (ATM for lexicals only):

sub dmp (\[$@%];\[$@%]\[$@%]\[$@%]\[$@%]\[$@%]\[$@%]\[$@%]\[$@%]\[$@%]
+){
  # die "to many arguments for dmp()" if @_>10;
  use PadWalker qw/var_name/;
  for $struc (@_){
    local $,="\n";
    my $name=var_name(1, $struc);
    $name=~s/^[\@\$\%]/\*/;
    print Data::Dumper->Dump([$struc],[$name]);
  }
}

[download]

which called with

dmp @fontspec;

produces the same output: 

@fontspec = (
              {
                'id' => '0',
                'family' => 'Helvetica',
                'size' => '10'
              },
              {
# ... and so on

[download]

But I have the uncomfortable feeling of reinventing the wheel...

Cheers Rolf

UPDATE: improved code

UPDATE: hmm maybe Conway's Smart::Comments should be mentioned, but it uses code filters...

In reply to Dumping variables but DRY and simple by LanX

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