Hi - I'm new to Perl.
In C, I had a nice simple macro to print a trace message with the script name, variable name, variable contents, and line number:

#define DEBUG(fmt,expr) \
fprintf(stderr, "DEBUG: " __FILE__ ":%d - " #expr " = [" #fmt "]\n", _
+_LINE__, expr);

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Example: debug statement in my_script.c, line 32

10: char szMyString[] = "ContentsOfMyString";
31: ...
32: DEBUG(%s, szMyString);
33: ...
34: ...
... output =>
DEBUG: my_script.c:32: - szMyString = [ContentsOfMyString]

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What I really like about this is (a) it automatically prints the variable name "szMyString" (via the "#expr" value), and (b) the line number. But in Perl, I find myself always re-typing the variable name (Dumper tends to just print "$VAR1" etc):

print "\$mystring: [", $mystring, "]\n";

Any suggestions on doing something similar in Perl, which automatically prints the variable name, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot.

In reply to How to get variable name in trace message by ChrisBeall

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