Programming Perl, 4th Edition

Code Development Tools

The O module has many interesting Modi Operandi beyond feeding the exasperatingly experimental code generators. By providing relatively painless access to the Perl compiler’s output, this module makes it easy to build other tools that need to know everything about a Perl program.

The B::Lint module is named after lint(1), the C program verifier. It inspects programs for questionable constructs that often trip up beginners but don’t normally trigger warnings. Call the module directly:

% perl –MO=Lint,all myprog

Only a few checks are currently defined, such as using an array in an implicit scalar context, relying on default variables, and accessing another package’s (nominally private) identifiers that start with _. See B::Lint(3) for details. You’ll probably find that most Perlers who lint their programs use Perl::Critic instead. It’s a static analysis tool built on top of PPI, and it does a pretty good job.

The B::Xref module generates cross-reference listings of the declaration and use of all variables (both global and lexically scoped), subroutines, and formats in a program, broken down by file and subroutine. Call the module this way:

% perl –MO=Xref myprog  > myprog.pxref

For instance, here’s a partial report:

Subroutine parse_argv Package (lexical) $on i113, 114 $opt i113, 114 %getopt_cfg i107, 113 @cfg_args i112, 114, 116, 116 Package Getopt::Long $ignorecase 101 &GetOptions &124 Package main $Options 123, 124, 141, 150, 165, 169 %$Options 141, 150, 165, 169 ...