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. 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; warn Dumper( $foo ); 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 COPYRIGHT Copyright (c) 2003, Barrie Slaymaker. All Rights Reserved. LICENSE You may use this software under the terms of the GNU Pulic License, the Artistic License, the BSD license, the MIT license, etc., etc., etc. Good luck and God Speed.