in reply to debug statements

if you don't want to go with something like Log::Log4perl, you could reduce it to a subroutine call, to make the typing easier: 
use constant DEBUG => 1;

debug("\$variable = $variable");

sub debug {
    return unless DEBUG >= 1;
    print 'DEBUG: ', @_, "\n";
}

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you say you are not worried about execution speed, but the above can be enhanced to support lazy evaluation of potentially expensive debugging operations by using closures: 
sub debug {
    return unless DEBUG >= 1;
    print 'DEBUG: ',
        ( ref $_[0] eq 'CODE' ? $_[0]->() : @_ ),
        "\n";
}

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that allows things like: 
debug( sub { Data::Dumper->new([$variable], ["variable"])->Dump } );

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and the expensive Dump operation will only be executed if DEBUG.

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Re^2: debug statements
by koknat (Sexton) on Oct 03, 2006 at 20:07 UTC
    I really like the idea of using a simple subroutine. Is there a way of making a subroutine that works like this?: 
    debug(\$variable);

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
      You mean something like this? 
      use constant DEBUG => 1;

sub debug {
    return unless DEBUG;
    my $ref = shift;
    print STDERR Dumper $ref;
}

my $foo = 'foo';
my @bar = ( qw/ foo bar baz / );

debug( \$foo );
debug( \@bar );

      [download]
      Output: 
      $VAR1 = \'foo';
$VAR1 = [
          'foo',
          'bar',
          'baz'
        ];

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[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
      not without resorting to extreme nastiness. you could try Data::Dumper::Names to make your life a little easier (?)... 
      use Data::Dumper::Names;
debug( Dumper($variable) );

      [download]
      note the CAVEATS in the Data::Dumper::Names documentation!
[reply]
[d/l]

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