NAME

Data::Dump - Pretty printing of data structures

SYNOPSIS

 use Data::Dump qw(dump);

 $str = dump(@list)
 @copy_of_list = eval $str;

DESCRIPTION

This module provide a single function called dump() that takes a list of values as argument and produce a string as result. The string contains perl code that when evaled will produce a deep copy of the original arguments. The string is formatted for easy reading.

If dump() is called in void context, then the dump will be printed on STDERR instead of being returned.

If you don't like to import a function that overrides Perl's not-so-useful builtin, then you can also import the same function as pp(), mnemonic for "pretty-print".

HISTORY

The Data::Dump module grew out of frustration with Sarathy's in-most-cases-excellent Data::Dumper. Basic ideas and some code is shared with Sarathy's module.

The Data::Dump module provide a much simpler interface than Data::Dumper. No OO interface is available and there are no configuration options to worry about (yet :-). The other benefit is that the dump produced does not try to set any variables. It only returns what is needed to produce a copy of the arguments. It means that dump("foo") simply returns "foo", and dump(1..5) simply returns (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

SEE ALSO

Data::Dumper, Storable

AUTHORS

The Data::Dump module is written by Gisle Aas <gisle@aas.no>, based on Data::Dumper by Gurusamy Sarathy <gsar@umich.edu>.

 Copyright 1998-2000,2003 Gisle Aas.
 Copyright 1996-1998 Gurusamy Sarathy.

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