G'day Kallewirsch,

There are a number of modules that will give you a snapshot of an object. Here's a selection (all of these are configurable; see doco for details):

• Data::Dumper — core
• Data::Dump — CPAN
• Data::Printer — CPAN; coloured output (not shown here)

Here's a quick example of each:

$ perl -E '
    use strict;
    use warnings;

    use Net::DNS::Packet;
    my $obj = Net::DNS::Packet::->new(qw{example.com MX IN});

    say "\n*** Data::Dumper";
    use Data::Dumper;
    print Dumper $obj;

    say "\n*** Data::Dump";
    use Data::Dump;
    dd $obj;

    say "\n*** Data::Printer";
    use Data::Printer;
    p $obj;
'

*** Data::Dumper
$VAR1 = bless( {
                 'status' => 0,
                 'authority' => [],
                 'answer' => [],
                 'additional' => [],
                 'question' => [
                                 bless( {
                                          'qtype' => 15,
                                          'qclass' => 1,
                                          'qname' => bless( {
                                                              'label' 
+=> [
                                                                      
+     'example',
                                                                      
+     'com'
                                                                      
+   ]
                                                            }, 'Net::D
+NS::DomainName1035' )
                                        }, 'Net::DNS::Question' )
                               ]
               }, 'Net::DNS::Packet' );

*** Data::Dump
bless({
  additional => [],
  answer     => [],
  authority  => [],
  question   => [
                  bless({
                    qclass => 1,
                    qname  => bless({ label => ["example", "com"] }, "
+Net::DNS::DomainName1035"),
                    qtype  => 15,
                  }, "Net::DNS::Question"),
                ],
  status     => 0,
}, "Net::DNS::Packet")

*** Data::Printer
Net::DNS::Packet  {
    public methods (38):
        additional, answer, answerfrom, answersize, authority, data, d
+ecode, dump, edns, encode, from, header, HEADER_LENGTH, new, pop, pre
+, prerequisite, print, push, question, reply, sign_sig0, sign_tsig, s
+igrr, size, string, truncate, UDPSZ, unique_push, update, verify, ver
+ifyerr, zone
        Carp:
            carp, confess, croak
        Net::DNS::Parameters:
            dsotypebyname, dsotypebyval
    private methods (1): _section
    internals: {
        additional   [],
        answer       [],
        authority    [],
        question     [
            [0] Net::DNS::Question
        ],
        status       0
    }
}
[download]

See also:

• perlreftut - Mark's very short tutorial about references
• perlref - Perl references and nested data structures
• perldsc - Perl Data Structures Cookbook

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