parsing a load of perl scripts

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

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Re: parsing a load of perl scripts by Corion (Patriarch) on Oct 13, 2004 at 13:11 UTC
If all you want, for a start, is a map of which script is called when, and all the scripts are Perl 5 scripts (and not Perl 4!!), then I would write some logging routines and load them into every Perl script via the `PERL5OPT=-MMy::Logging::Script` environment variable. Depending on your specific needs, it might already be enough to do the following: `export PERL5OPT=-e'BEGIN{local *LOG; open LOG, ">", "$ENV{HOME}/script +log.log; print LOG "$0 started at ". localtime()}'` [download] This requires no modification to your existing scripts, but it needs to be available in the environment. This means that the scripts that are run through the `cron` program need to be modified, or you have to modify the crontab calling these scripts. I don't know of any call graph generator for Perl, so other than weeding out the scripts that are not immediately called via the shell, this won't be of much help and you'll have to go through the scripts with a fine comb anyway.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: parsing a load of perl scripts by aquarium (Curate) on Oct 13, 2004 at 13:38 UTC
the perl debugger "perl -d progname.pl" has an option to dump call stack. Beware though, that some functions may never get called during a particular run, depending on program input. if the code in a program is long, not well documented, and code is not trusted..then you may spend more time looking at code rather than re-writing it. For any program roughly 100 lines or more, it's impossible to keep it all in your head...so when you write/rewrite long code, more than mere comments is needed as documentation. A flow chart is so helpful when reviewing even your own code that you haven't looked at for some time.	[reply]
Re: parsing a load of perl scripts by Happy-the-monk (Canon) on Oct 13, 2004 at 14:18 UTC
P.P.S. the guy who originally did this stuff has left the company, for some time now Get in contact with that man -- is the best and cheapest advice there is. You might not believe me, others probably will not believe you, but try anyway. Update: Perl Medic: Transforming Legacy Code by Peter J. Scott is a book on the subject that's worth while. The other Update is a link to the book: "Perl Medic: Transforming Legacy Code"	[reply]
Re: parsing a load of perl scripts by Fletch (Bishop) on Oct 13, 2004 at 13:39 UTC
Possibly Devel::Cover or Devel::Trace could be of use.	[reply]
Re^2: parsing a load of perl scripts by bart (Canon) on Oct 14, 2004 at 02:12 UTC
Amen to that. See the articles on the subject on Doctor Dobb's Journal by brian d foy. They're among just a few that he wrote for DDJ, so they're easy to find — plus: they're all online, for free. See Code Coverage Analysis in Perl as one of the more relevant articles.	[reply]
Re: parsing a load of perl scripts by davido (Cardinal) on Oct 13, 2004 at 15:13 UTC
The B::Xref module does generate some useful information on subroutine and variable usage. You may even be able to parse its output looking for intersections between scripts. Dave	[reply]
Re: parsing a load of perl scripts by graff (Chancellor) on Oct 14, 2004 at 01:32 UTC
If the multiple scripts are supposed to be parts of a single app, I posted a tool here: Tabulate sub defs, sub calls in Perl code, which is somewhat simple-minded but may be useful -- it won't tell you how paths are actually followed (this would normally depend on data or conditions external to the script anyway), but it could at least make it easier to navigate among the various files. If you know of one particular file that is certainly in use, you can see what other files it entails, by virtue of the subs that are called and where they are defined. HTH.	[reply]