Perl-Uwe.com: Day 7: Alternatives to Data::Dumper

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Day 7: Alternatives to Data::Dumper

Data::Dumper is a handy module. But I prefer Data::Dump: Its output is compacter and already sorted (hash keys). Data::Dumper also has a setting to sort the keys ($Data::Dumper::Sortkeys), but with Data::Dump "it just works". :)

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use Data::Dumper;
use Data::Dump;

my $small = {a => 1, b => 2, c => 3, d => 4, e => 5};
my $large = {
    aaa => 'data set 1',
    bbb => 'data set 2',
    ccc => 'data set 3',
    ddd => 'data set 4',
    xxx => $small,
};

print "Data::Dumper:\n";
print Dumper($small);
print Dumper($large);

print "\nData::Dump:\n";
dd($small);
dd($large);

The following output shows the default settings of each module:

Data::Dumper:
$VAR1 = {
          'e' => 5,
          'c' => 3,
          'a' => 1,
          'b' => 2,
          'd' => 4
        };
$VAR1 = {
          'bbb' => 'data set 2',
          'xxx' => {
                     'e' => 5,
                     'c' => 3,
                     'a' => 1,
                     'b' => 2,
                     'd' => 4
                   },
          'aaa' => 'data set 1',
          'ccc' => 'data set 3',
          'ddd' => 'data set 4'
        };

Data::Dump:
{ a => 1, b => 2, c => 3, d => 4, e => 5 }
{
  aaa => "data set 1",
  bbb => "data set 2",
  ccc => "data set 3",
  ddd => "data set 4",
  xxx => { a => 1, b => 2, c => 3, d => 4, e => 5 },
}

As I said, Data::Dump is compacter. :)
If a structure fits into one line, it will do so.

Another neat module is Data::Dumper::Concise. It is an "optimal" configuration of Data::Dumper. But I don't care, I use Data::Dump for that. But I like its Devel::Dwarn module. It exports Dwarn, which allows you this:

sub ... {
    my $ua = ...
    ...
    return Dwarn $ua->get(...);
}

Normally you would have to rewrite your code and assign the result of the method call to a temporary variable and dump it. With Dwarn the changes are minimal. Also exported: DwarnS for scalar context and DwarnL for list context.

Have a look at Data::Dump::Streamer for another alternative to Data::Dumper.

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