Hi,

I'm trying to write a simple debug function, which will let me pass in a string + a color (or color combination). This is what I have so far:

sub print_debug {

# black  red  green  yellow  blue  magenta  cyan  white

    my ($text, $color) = @_;
    unless ($color) {
        print STDERR "$text \n";
    } else {
        use Term::ANSIColor qw(:constants);
        if ($color =~ /blue/i) {
            print STDERR BLUE, "$text \n", RESET;
        } elsif ($color =~ /yellow/i) {
            print STDERR YELLOW, "$text \n", RESET;
        } elsif ($color =~ /red/i) {
            print STDERR RED, "$text \n", RESET;            
        } elsif ($color =~ /blue/i) {
            print STDERR BLUE, "$text \n", RESET;            
        } elsif ($color =~ /magenta/i) {
            print STDERR MAGENTA, "$text \n", RESET;            
        } elsif ($color =~ /cyan/i) {
            print STDERR CYAN ON_GREEN, "$text \n", RESET;
        }
       
    }

}
[download]

..which is called with:

print_debug ("foo","blue");

However, I would prefer to be able to simply pass in stuff like:

print_debug ("foo","blue on_white");

...which would convert to:

print BLUE ON_WHITE, "foo", RESET;

This doesn't seem to be valid syntax though:

sub print_debug {

# black  red  green  yellow  blue  magenta  cyan  white

    my ($text, $color) = @_;
    unless ($color) {
        print STDERR "$text \n";
    } else {
        use Term::ANSIColor qw(:constants);
        print STDERR $color, "$text \n", RESET;
       
    }

}
[download]

I'm guessing its cos the $color is actually a variable. Is there a way I can do this, or should I just stick with my other solution?

TIA

Andy