I need to debug some code and the way I usually do it is by having statements such as print x if $DEBUG.

I've looked in perltoot and it recommends that you have debug methods, but I'd like to do this without having to have extra methods or to have to immplement get / set methods for my DEBUG flag, or to have to pass in extra parameters as I'll have to retro fit this across modules.

My solution is below, am I doing things that are not a good idea by explicitly setting $main::DEBUG or is this OK? 

#------------- script
#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Deb;

$main::DEBUG = 1;

my $db = new Deb;
$db->start();
print "done \n";

#----------package

#!/usr/local/bin/perl5

package Deb;

use strict;

sub new {

    my $class = shift;
    my $self = {};

    $self->{DEBUG} = $main::DEBUG || 0;

    bless $self, $class;
    return $self;

}

sub start {
    my $self = shift;

    print "Debugging flag is working\n" if ($self->{DEBUG});
    print "Debugging flag is working\n" if ($main::DEBUG);
}


1;

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In reply to Debugging in packages by agoth

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