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Devel::Symdump - dump symbol names or the symbol table
# Constructor
require Devel::Symdump;
@packs = qw(some_package another_package);
$obj = Devel::Symdump->new(@packs); # no recursion
$obj = Devel::Symdump->rnew(@packs); # with recursion
# Methods
@array = $obj->packages;
@array = $obj->scalars;
@array = $obj->arrays;
@array = $obj->hashes;
@array = $obj->functions;
@array = $obj->filehandles; # deprecated, use ios instead
@array = $obj->dirhandles; # deprecated, use ios instead
@array = $obj->ios;
@array = $obj->unknowns; # only perl version < 5.003 had some
$string = $obj->as_string;
$string = $obj->as_HTML;
$string = $obj1->diff($obj2);
$string = Devel::Symdump->isa_tree; # or $obj->isa_tree
$string = Devel::Symdump->inh_tree; # or $obj->inh_tree
# Methods with autogenerated objects
# all of those call new(@packs) internally
@array = Devel::Symdump->packages(@packs);
@array = Devel::Symdump->scalars(@packs);
@array = Devel::Symdump->arrays(@packs);
@array = Devel::Symdump->hashes(@packs);
@array = Devel::Symdump->functions(@packs);
@array = Devel::Symdump->ios(@packs);
@array = Devel::Symdump->unknowns(@packs);
This little package serves to access the symbol table of perl.
Devel::Symdump->rnew(@packages)
returns a symbol table object for all subtrees below @packages.
Nested Modules are analyzed recursively. If no package is given as
argument, it defaults to main. That means to get the whole symbol
table, just do a rnew without arguments.
The global variable $Devel::Symdump::MAX_RECURSION limits the recursion to prevent contention. The default value is set to 97, just low enough to survive the test suite without a warning about deep recursion.
Devel::Symdump->new(@packages)
does not go into recursion and only analyzes the packages that are given as arguments.
The methods packages(), scalars(), arrays(), hashes(), functions(),
ios(), and (for older perls) unknowns() each return an array of fully
qualified symbols of the specified type in all packages that are held
within a Devel::Symdump object, but without the leading $, @ or
%. In a scalar context, they will return the number of such
symbols. Unknown symbols are usually either formats or variables that
haven't yet got a defined value.
As_string() and as_HTML() return a simple string/HTML representations
of the object.
Diff() prints the difference between two Devel::Symdump objects in
human readable form. The format is similar to the one used by the
as_string method.
Isa_tree() and inh_tree() both return a simple string representation
of the current inheritance tree. The difference between the two
methods is the direction from which the tree is viewed: top-down or
bottom-up. As I'm sure, many users will have different expectation
about what is top and what is bottom, I'll provide an example what
happens when the Socket module is loaded:
AutoLoader
DynaLoader
Socket
DynaLoader
Socket
Exporter
Carp
Config
Socket
The inh_tree method shows on the left hand side a package name and indented to the right the packages that use the former.
Carp
Exporter
Config
Exporter
DynaLoader
AutoLoader
Socket
Exporter
DynaLoader
AutoLoader
The isa_tree method displays from left to right ISA relationships, so Socket IS A DynaLoader and DynaLoader IS A AutoLoader. (Actually, they were at the time this manpage was written)
You may call both methods, isa_tree() and inh_tree(), with an
object. If you do that, the object will store the output and retrieve
it when you call the same method again later. The typical usage would
be to use them as class methods directly though.
The design of this package is intentionally primitive and allows it to be subclassed easily. An example of a (maybe) useful subclass is Devel::Symdump::Export, a package which exports all methods of the Devel::Symdump package and turns them into functions.
Andreas Koenig
This module is
Copyright (c) 1995, 1997, 2000, 2002, 2005, 2006 Andreas Koenig <andk@cpan.org>.
All rights reserved.
This library is free software; you may use, redistribute and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.