Thanks for the input. As far as meaningful names go, I just need something quick and dirty to type. And I type these so frequently, I'm not worried about forgetting them and I'm not sharing my debug module so I don't care. And I use a wrapper for Data::Dump in my debug module so I'm not worried about stomping on it. Besides, being able to break rules is what can make you a bad ass if you know what you are doing (or just an ass if you don't). :)

On point three, I didn't know exporting vars was a bad idea. I'll keep that in mind.

Point 4: yes, on my todo list.

Regarding solution, I went with the solution in the comment above which is super clean, just one line. But it basically works like your suggestion. Thanks.