SYNOPSIS use Data::Dmp; # exports dd() and dmp() dd [1, 2, 3]; # prints "[1,2,3]" $a = dmp({a => 1}); # -> "{a=>1}" DESCRIPTION Data::Dmp is a Perl dumper like Data::Dumper. It's compact (only about 150 lines of code long), starts fast and does not use other module except Regexp::Stringify when dumping regexes. It produces compact output (similar to Data::Dumper::Concise). It roughly has the same speed as Data::Dumper (usually a bit faster for smaller structures), but does not offer the various formatting options. It supports dumping objects, regexes, circular structures, coderefs. Its code is based on Data::Dump. FUNCTIONS dd($data, ...) => $data ... Exported by default. Like Data::Dump's dd (a.k.a. dump), print one or more data to STDOUT. Unlike Data::Dump's dd, it always prints and return the original data (like XXX), making it convenient to insert into expressions. This also removes ambiguity and saves one wantarray() call. dmp($data, ...) => $str Exported by default. Return dump result as string. Unlike Data::Dump's dd (a.k.a. dump), it never prints and only return the data. SETTINGS $Data::Dmp::OPT_PERL_VERSION => str (default: 5.010) Set target Perl version. If you set this to, say 5.010, then the dumped code will keep compatibility with Perl 5.10.0. This is used in the following ways: * passed to Regexp::Stringify * when dumping code references For example, in perls earlier than 5.016, feature.pm does not understand: no feature ':all'; so we replace it with: no feature; $Data::Dmp::OPT_REMOVE_PRAGMAS => bool (default: 0) If set to 1, then pragmas at the start of coderef dump will be removed. Coderef dump is produced by B::Deparse and is of the form like: sub { use feature 'current_sub', 'evalbytes', 'fc', 'say', 'state', 'switch', 'unicode_strings', 'unicode_eval'; $a <=> $b } If you want to dump short coderefs, the pragmas might be distracting. You can turn turn on this option which will make the above dump become: sub { $a <=> $b } Note that without the pragmas, the dump might be incorrect. BENCHMARKS # COMMAND: devscripts/bench FAQ When to use Data::Dmp? How does it compare to other dumper modules? Data::Dmp might be suitable for you if you want a relatively fast pure-Perl data structure dumper to eval-able Perl code. It produces compact, single-line Perl code but offers little/no formatting options. Data::Dmp and Data::Dump module family usually produce Perl code that is "more eval-able", e.g. it can recreate circular structure. Data::Dump produces nicer output (some alignment, use of range operator to shorten lists, use of base64 for binary data, etc) but no built-in option to produce compact/single-line output. It's also relatively slow. I usually use its variant, Data::Dump::Color, for console debugging. Data::Dumper is core module, offers a lot of formatting options (like disabling hash key sorting, setting verboseness/indent level, and so on) but you usually have to configure it quite a bit before it does exactly like you want (that's why there are modules on CPAN that are just wrapping Data::Dumper with some configuration, like Data::Dumper::Concise et al). It does not support dumping Perl code that can recreate circular structures. Of course, dumping to eval-able Perl code is slow (not to mention the cost of re-loading the code back to in-memory data, via eval-ing) compared to dumping to JSON, YAML, Sereal, or other format. So you need to decide first whether this is the appropriate route you want to take. (But note that there is also Data::Dumper::Limited and Data::Undump which uses a format similar to Data::Dumper but lets you load the serialized data without eval-ing them, thus achieving the speed comparable to JSON::XS). SEE ALSO Data::Dump and other variations/derivate works in Data::Dump::*. Data::Dumper and its variants. Data::Printer. YAML, JSON, Storable, Sereal, and other serialization formats.