using Data::Dumper to monitor methods?

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

I'm a newbie, so this question may be obvious and/or poorly formed. Is it possible to set Data::Dumper in some manner in order to look at all variables enclosed? Something akin to --

    use Data::Dumper;

    # enable monitoring
    my $rc = foo(1, 2, 3);
    # disable monitoring

    sub foo {
        my ($one, $two, $three) = @_;
        my ($i, $j);
        # manipulate $i & $j...
        return $j;
    }
[download]

Is there some way to set this up such that values of $rc & $i are printed out? Thanks.

Comment on using Data::Dumper to monitor methods? Download Code

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Re: using Data::Dumper to monitor methods? by saintmike (Vicar) on Mar 01, 2005 at 01:14 UTC
Seems like you're aiming in the general direction of tracing. If you start your program with tracing enabled, via `PERLDB_OPTS="NonStop=1 AutoTrace=1 frame=31" perl -dS yourscript.pl` [download] then perl's debugger will (non-interactively) start logging each line executed and will also show input/output parameters of functions called. Generally, though, I'd recommend using a logging framework like Log::Log4perl for this instead. Once embedded in the code, it can be switched on or off via a configuration file. It's easier to adapt to you your specific needs.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: using Data::Dumper to monitor methods? by Anonymous Monk on Mar 01, 2005 at 00:57 UTC
Rearticulating my question, is there a way to look at the values of temporal variables within a function without modifying the code? Thanks.	[reply]
Re^2: using Data::Dumper to monitor methods? by Tanktalus (Canon) on Mar 01, 2005 at 01:01 UTC
You're probably wanting to look at the perl debugger, DB. How precisely to do that I leave to the more experienced/adventurous, but I'm quite sure that the perl debugger can do this somehow.	[reply]