Chapter 4. Debugging Perl
The standard Perl distribution comes with a debugger, although it’s really
just another Perl program, perl5db.pl. Since it is just a
program, I can use it as the basis for writing my own debuggers to suit my
needs, or I can use the interface perl5db.pl provides to configure its actions. That’s just the beginning,
though. I can write my own debugger or use one of the many debuggers created
by other Perl masters.
Before You Waste Too Much Time
Before I get started, I’m almost required to remind you that Perl
offers two huge debugging aids: strict and warnings.
I have the most trouble with smaller programs for which I don’t think I
need strict and then I make the stupid mistakes it
would have caught. I spend much more time than I should have tracking down
something Perl would have shown me instantly. Common mistakes seem to be
the hardest for me to debug. Learn from the master: don’t discount
strict or warnings for even small programs.
Now that I’ve said that, you’re going to look for it in the examples
in this chapter. Just pretend those lines are there, and the book costs a
bit less for the extra half a page that I saved by omitting those lines.
Or if you don’t like that, just imagine that I’m running every program
with both strict and warnings turned
on from the command line:
$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings program
Along with that, I have another problem that bites me much more than I should be willing to admit. Am I editing the file on the same machine I’m running ...
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