note
jmcnamara
<p>
One option may be [http://search.cpan.org/~jmcnamara/Data-Dumper-Perltidy-0.02/lib/Data/Dumper/Perltidy.pm|Data::Dumper::Perltidy]:
</p>
<code>
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper::Perltidy;
$Data::Dumper::Perltidy::ARGV = '-i=4 -boc -nopro';
my $data = [
[
[[[[["a", "b"], "c"], ["d", "e"]], [[["f", "g"], "h"], [["i", "j"],
["k", ["l", "m"]]]]],
["n", [[["o", "p"], "q"], ["r", "s"]]]], ["t", ["u", "v"]]
],
[["w", ["x", "y"]], "z"]
];
print Dumper $data;
__END__
</code>
<p>
Which gives a structure similar to your hand manipulated example:
</p>
<spoiler>
<code>
$VAR1 = [
[
[
[
[
[
[
'a',
'b'
],
'c'
],
[
'd',
'e'
]
],
[
[
[
'f',
'g'
],
'h'
],
[
[
'i',
'j'
],
[
'k',
[
'l',
'm'
]
]
]
]
],
[
'n',
[
[
[
'o',
'p'
],
'q'
],
[
'r',
's'
]
]
]
],
[
't',
[
'u',
'v'
]
]
],
[
[
'w',
[
'x',
'y'
]
],
'z'
]
];
</code>
</spoiler>
<p>
The perltidy options are explained in the [http://perltidy.sourceforge.net/perltidy.html|Perltidy manpage].
</p>
<p>Update: actually this isn't much of an improvement over the base Data::Dumper formatting due to the <tt>-boc</tt> option but without it Perl::Tidy compacts the branches too much. So, it probably isn't useful in this case.
</p>
<p>
--
<br>
John.
<br>
998803
998803