CHAPTER 17Debugging, Testing, and Profiling

Perl comes with a comprehensive and fully featured debugger. Unlike other languages, however, the debugger is not a separate tool but simply a special mode of the Perl interpreter, which makes use of an external library called perl5db.pl. To enable it, we use the -d option, after which we may step through code, set breakpoints, examine, and execute code selectively from inside the debugger.

In addition to the debugger, Perl supplies a number of modules designed for debugging support or that are simply useful for debugging. In particular, the Safe module allows us to create a restricted environment for Perl scripts to run in, and the Test::Harness module in conjunction with Test, Test::Simple, or

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