in reply to Win32::OLE Word objects and Dumper

Not being an MSFT OLE expert precludes an exceptionally illuminating answer to your specific inquiry, at least from this monk. Nevertheless, if you have a copy of Word with VBA support, Visual Studio or any of the other MSFT development environments that allow you to set a breakpoint, you can visually scan OLE objects in the graphical debugger that comes with those tools.

If you haven't tried this yet, you might want to, because you are likely in for a surprise. Specifically, you will notice that certain OLE variables contain multiple nested references that quite literally recurse indefinitely, or cross-reference structures and objects that you may not expect. Just take a look in the MSFT debugger and this will become immediately apparent.

What's probably happening is Data::Dumper is dutifully doing what you ask of it, and attempting to return a dumpified version of your entire heap as far as Win OLE sees it.

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Re^2: Win32::OLE Word objects and Dumper
by holli (Abbot) on Jan 24, 2005 at 10:52 UTC
    Specifically, you will notice that certain OLE variables contain multiple nested references that quite literally recurse indefinitely, or cross-reference structures and objects that you may not expect.
    Very true. But there is a way around that. You can set the $Data::Dumper::Maxdepth-variable to a numeric value >0, so that Dumper() will not recurse infinitly. 
    use Data::Dumper;
$Data::Dumper::Maxdepth=3;

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    holli, regexed monk
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