NAME

Data::Dumper::Perltidy - Dump and pretty print Perl data structures.

SYNOPSIS

To use Data::Dumper::Perltidy::Dumper() to stringify and pretty print a Perl data structure:

    use Data::Dumper::Perltidy;

    ...

    print Dumper $some_data_structure;

DESCRIPTION

Data::Dumper::Perltidy encapsulates both Data::Dumper and Perl::Tidy to provide a function that stringifies a Perl data structure in a pretty printed format. See the documentation for Data::Dumper and Perl::Tidy for further information.

Data::Dumper can be used for, among other things, stringifying complex Perl data structures into a format that is suitable for printing and debugging.

Perl::Tidy can be used to pretty print Perl code in a consistent and configurable manner.

Data::Dumper also provides a certain level of pretty printing via the $Data::Dumper::Indent variable but it isn't quite as nice as the Perl::Tidy output.

Let's look at an example to see how this module can be used. Say you have a complex data structure that you wish to inspect. You can use the Data::Dumper::Perltidy::Dumper() function as follows (note that the syntax is the same as Data::Dumper):

    #!/usr/bin/perl -w

    use strict;
    use Data::Dumper::Perltidy;

    my $data = [{ title => 'This is a test header' },{ data_range =>
               [ 0, 0, 3, 9 ] },{ format     => 'bold' }];

    print Dumper $data;

This would print out:

    $VAR1 = [
        { 'title'      => 'This is a test header' },
        { 'data_range' => [ 0, 0, 3, 9 ] },
        { 'format'     => 'bold' }
    ];

By comparison the standard Data::Dumper::Dumper() output would be:

    $VAR1 = [
              {
                'title' => 'This is a test header'
              },
              {
                'data_range' => [
                                  0,
                                  0,
                                  3,
                                  9
                                ]
              },
              {
                'format' => 'bold'
              }
            ];

Which isn't too bad but if you are used to Perl::Tidy and the perltidy utility you may prefer the Data::Dumper::Perltidy::Dumper() output.

FUNCTIONS

Dumper()

The Dumper() function takes a list of perl structures and returns a stringified and pretty printed form of the values in the list. The values will be named $VARn in the output, where n is a numeric suffix.

You can modify the Perl::Tidy output by passing arguments via the $Data::Dumper::Perltidy::ARGV configuration variable:

    $Data::Dumper::Perltidy::ARGV = '-nst -mbl=2 -pt=0 -nola';

See the Perl::Tidy docs for more information on the available arguments. By default Data::Dumper::Perltidy uses the argument -npro to ignore any local .perltidyrc configuration file.

The Data::Dumper $Data::Dumper:: configuration variables can also be used to influence the output where applicable. For further information see the Data::Dumper documentation.

Note: unlike Data::Dumper::Dumper() this function doesn't currently return a list of strings in a list context.

RATIONALE

I frequently found myself copying the output of Data::Dumper::Dumper() into an editor so that I could run perltidy on it. This module scratches that itch.

LIMITATIONS

This module doesn't attempt to implement all, or even most, of the functionality of Data::Dumper.

AUTHOR

John McNamara <jmcnamara@cpan.org>

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature requests to https://github.com/jmcnamara/data-dumper-perltidy/issues on Github.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors and maintainers of Data::Dumper and Perl::Tidy.

SEE ALSO

Data::Dump

Data::Printer, which also has a full list of alternatives.

COPYRIGHT & LICENSE

Copyright 2009-2012 John McNamara, all rights reserved.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

cpanm Data::Dumper::Perltidy

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Data::Dumper::Perltidy