BFD(3)

NAME
  BFD - Impromptu dumping of data structures for debugging purposes

SYNOPSIS
   my $scary_structure1 = foo();
   my $scary_structure2 = bar();
   use BFD; d $scary_structure1, " hmmm ", $scary_structure2, ...;
   ....

DESCRIPTION
Allows for impromptu dumping of output to STDERR. Useful when you want to take a peek at a nest Perl data structure by emitting (relatively) nicely formatted output with filename and line number prefixed to each line.

Basically,

    use BFD;d $foo;

is shorthand for

    use Data::Dumper;
    local $Data::Dumper::Indent    = 1;
    local $Data::Dumper::Quotekeys = 0;
    local $Data::Dumper::Terse     = 1;
    local $Data::Dumper::Sortkeys  = 1;
    my $msg = Dumper( $foo );
    $msg =~ s/^/$where: /mg;
    warn $msg;

I use this incantation soooo often that a TLA version is warranted. YMMV.

LIMITATIONS
Uses Data::Dumper, which has varying degrees of stability and usefulness on different versions of perl.

AUTHOR
Barrie Slaymaker <barries@slaysys.com>

COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 2003, Barrie Slaymaker. All Rights Reserved.

LICENSE
You may use this software under the terms of the GNU Public License, the Artistic License, the BSD license, or the MIT license.

Good luck and God Speed.