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How can I visualize my complex data structure?

by planetscape (Chancellor)
on Aug 07, 2005 at 22:22 UTC ( [id://481745]=perlquestion: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

planetscape has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question: (data structures)

I still don't understand my complex data structure. Can Perl draw me a picture?

Originally posted as a Categorized Question.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: How can I visualize my complex data structure?
by planetscape (Chancellor) on Aug 07, 2005 at 22:24 UTC

    Yes. In the spirit of TMTOWTDI, there are several ways to represent your data structure. Which you choose is largely up to you. The information provided below should serve as an overview only; always consult a module's complete documentation for usage, bugs, and caveats.

    1. Dumpvalue

    More of a prettyprinter than a serializer, this method provides the view of your data structure that is most like the output from Perl's debugger. The output format may be modified by setting numerous options. Dumpvalue can even dump the symbol tables of whole packages.

    use strict; use warnings; use Dumpvalue; my $ref = { a => [ 1, 2, 3 ], b => [ { X => 1, Y=> 2 }, { X => [ 1, 2, 3 ], Y => [ 4, 5, 6 ], Z => [ 7, 8, 9 ] }, ], }; print "Dumpvalue:\n"; Dumpvalue->new->dumpValue( $ref );

    Output:

    Dumpvalue: 'a' => ARRAY(0x460ee8) 0 1 1 2 2 3 'b' => ARRAY(0x4e3e50) 0 HASH(0x4d964c) 'X' => 1 'Y' => 2 1 HASH(0x4e3e14) 'X' => ARRAY(0x4d967c) 0 1 1 2 2 3 'Y' => ARRAY(0x4e3d9c) 0 4 1 5 2 6 'Z' => ARRAY(0x4e3dd8) 0 7 1 8 2 9
    1. Data::Dumper

    Possibly the most popular choice, Data::Dumper outputs actual Perl code. As such, it is both a prettyprinter and a serializer. Data::Dumper can handle self-referential data structures, and evaling Data::Dumper's output reconstitutes an exact copy of the original data structure. This module is useful both for saving data structures to disk and DBM files and for passing them to other processes. As with Dumpvalue, Data::Dumper's output is configurable.

    use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dumper; my $ref = { a => [ 1, 2, 3 ], b => [ { X => 1, Y=> 2 }, { X => [ 1, 2, 3 ], Y => [ 4, 5, 6 ], Z => [ 7, 8, 9 ] }, ], }; print "Data::Dumper:\n"; print Dumper( $ref );

    Output:

    Data::Dumper: $VAR1 = { 'a' => [ 1, 2, 3 ], 'b' => [ { 'X' => 1, 'Y' => 2 }, { 'Z' => [ 7, 8, 9 ], 'X' => [ 1, 2, 3 ], 'Y' => [ 4, 5, 6 ] } ] };
    1. YAML's Dump

    Another prettyprinter/serializer combo. YAML's output format is also controllable and hash keys are sorted by default. Since YAML does not eval to de-serialize, it is safer than Data::Dumper when you're not sure who else might have access to your files. Data structures serialized from Perl using YAML can be accurately read and processed using YAML in Java, Javascript, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Tcl (and of course, Perl). Likewise, data structures may be serialized in any of these languages and be usable by Perl.

    use strict; use warnings; use YAML; my $ref = { a => [ 1, 2, 3 ], b => [ { X => 1, Y=> 2 }, { X => [ 1, 2, 3 ], Y => [ 4, 5, 6 ], Z => [ 7, 8, 9 ] }, ], }; print "YAML::Dump:\n"; print Dump( $ref );

    Output:

    YAML::Dump: --- a: - 1 - 2 - 3 b: - X: 1 Y: 2 - X: - 1 - 2 - 3 Y: - 4 - 5 - 6 Z: - 7 - 8 - 9
    1. Data::Dump::Streamer, by demerphq

    If it's by our very own demerphq, it must be good.

    Data::Dump::Streamer offers more accurate and more readable output, and uses less memory, than does Data::Dumper. Hash keys are sorted and the sort order is configurable. Data::Dump::Streamer's output, like that of Data::Dumper, may be evaled back to its original form.

    use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dump::Streamer; my $ref = { a => [ 1, 2, 3 ], b => [ { X => 1, Y=> 2 }, { X => [ 1, 2, 3 ], Y => [ 4, 5, 6 ], Z => [ 7, 8, 9 ] }, ], }; print "Data::Dump::Streamer:\n"; print Dump( $ref );

    Output:

    Data::Dump::Streamer: $HASH1 = { a => [ 1, 2, 3 ], b => [ { X => 1, Y => 2 }, { X => [ 1, 2, 3 ], Y => [ 4, 5, 6 ], Z => [ 7, 8, 9 ] } ] };
    See also: Test::Struct
    1. GraphViz::Data::Structure is one of two modules I know of that literally draw you a picture of your data structure. Great for the visually-oriented, but none of the de-serializing or multi-lingual features of the above alternatives.
    use strict; use warnings; use GraphViz::Data::Structure; my $data_structure = { a => [ 1, 2, 3 ], b => [ { X => 1, Y => 2 }, { X => [ 1, 2, 3 ], Y => [ 4, 5, 6 ], Z => [ 7, 8, 9 ] }, ], }; my $gvds = GraphViz::Data::Structure->new( $data_structure, Orientation => 'ver +tical' ); print $gvds->graph()->as_png("gvds.png");

    Output

    1. GraphViz::Data::Grapher is the other of the two, and happens to be my personal favorite. No reconstituting original structures or sharing them with other languages such as Python or Ruby; but this does create very nice illustrations of complex data structures for documentation or perhaps teaching purposes.
    use strict; use warnings; use GraphViz::Data::Grapher; my $structure = { a => [ 1, 2, 3 ], b => [ { X => 1, Y => 2 }, { X => [ 1, 2, 3 ], Y => [ 4, 5, 6 ], Z => [ 7, 8, 9 ] }, ], }; my $graph = GraphViz::Data::Grapher->new($structure); print $graph->as_png("gvdg.png");

    Output

     

    For more on visualizing hash structure, please see: Not Exactly a Hash Tutorial

     

    References (incomplete and in no particular order):

      There's also Data::Dumper::Simple, by Ovid. I find it very useful for development, but I remove it in my production code. The reason is that it adds quite a bit of wallclock seconds to the program's execution.

      ---
      It's all fine and dandy until someone has to look at the code.
Re: How can I visualize my complex data structure?
by Discipulus (Canon) on Nov 11, 2005 at 09:08 UTC
    Here is a little dumper I wrote some time ago:
    my %h2 = ( 'AAA' => 'aaa', 'BBB' => 'bbb', 'CCC' => { 'A1' => 'a1', 'B1' => 'b1', 'C1' => { 'A2' => 'a2', 'B2' => 'b2', 'C2' => 'c2END', }, }, 'DDD' => 'ddd', ); sub ddump { my $ref = shift; my $deep = shift||1; for my $k ( sort keys %$ref ) { if ( ref $ref->{$k} ) { print "\t" x $deep."$k =>\n"; ddump( $ref->{$k}, $deep+1 ); } else { print "\t" x ($deep)."$k => $ref->{$k}\n"; } } } ddump( \%h2 );
    Then I found a column by merlyn, which gave me the idea of dumping into a CGI table structure. The result:
    use CGI qw /:all -nph/; #on Win32 $|++; sub nest { my $it = shift; ref $it ? complex_table($it) : $it } sub complex_table { my $hr = shift; # could test here to ensure that $hr is indeed a hash ref. table( { -border => 2, -bordercolor => 'green', -cellspacing => '0 +', }, map Tr( td( {-valign=>'top'}, $_ ), td( nest( $hr->{$_} ))), s +ort keys %$hr ); } my %h1 = (); # feed your HoH here print start_html, complex_table( \%h1 ), end_html;
    which produces a dump like this:
    AAA aaa
    BBB bbb
    CCC
    A1 a1
    B1 b1
    C1
    A2 a2
    B2 b2
    C2 c2END
    DDD ddd
Re: How can I visualize my complex data structure?
by Xiong (Hermit) on Feb 17, 2010 at 14:14 UTC

    My personal favorite is Smart::Comments.

    use strict; use warnings; # Enable special comments for debugging and reporting: use Smart::Comments; my $data_structure = { a => [ 1, 2, 3 ], b => [ { X => 1, Y => 2 }, { X => [ 1, 2, 3 ], Y => [ 4, 5, 6 ], Z => [ 7, 8, 9 ] }, ], }; # the following is a "smart comment" which causes a dump of the expres +sion, using Data::Dumper: ### $data_structure
    Produces this output:
    ### $data_structure: { ### a => [ ### 1, ### 2, ### 3 ### ], ### b => [ ### { ### X => 1, ### Y => 2 ### }, ### { ### X => [ ### 1, ### 2, ### 3 ### ], ### Y => [ ### 4, ### 5, ### 6 ### ], ### Z => [ ### 7, ### 8, ### 9 ### ] ### } ### ] ### }

    Smart::Comments does much, much more than this, too.

      I think i have a new favourite too...

      Just a something something...
Re: How can I visualize my complex data structure?
by Discipulus (Canon) on Nov 17, 2005 at 08:19 UTC
    hello Monks,

    maybe I can give my answer ?!? fantastic !! I was warking on dumping HoH on the screen for a better overview and I wrote this:
    my %h2=( 'AAA' => 'aaa', 'BBB' => 'bbb', 'CCC' => {'A1' => a1, 'B1' => 'b1', 'C1' => {'A2' => a2,'B2' => 'b2','C2' => 'c2END'}}, 'DDD' => 'ddd', ); my $ref2 = \%h2; &ddump($ref2); sub ddump { my $ref = shift; my $deep = shift||1; foreach my $k (sort keys %{$ref}) { if (ref( ${$ref}{$k})) {print "\t" x $deep."$k =>\n"; &ddump (${$ref}{$k}, ($deep+1)) } else {print "\t" x ($deep)."$k => ${$ref}{$k}\n";} $deep-1; } }
    Then I found a column by Merlyn, only 8 year later, that suggested me a new rebus to solve: how about to dump via CGI.pm table ?? or to be precise Hohoh->TableOfTableOfTable here the code:
    use warnings; use CGI qw /:all -nph/; #on Win32 $|++; $POST_MAX=100; $DISABLE_UPLOAD=1; print header(); print start_html(); my %HoHoH = ();#feed your hoh here my $ref2 = \%HoHoH ; print &table_center(&complextable($ref2)); print end_html; sub td_center{{-align=>center} td([@_]); }#separated for customization sub tr_center {{-align=>center}Tr([@_]); } sub table_center { table({-title=>'oOOOo', -bgcolor=>"#000000", -border=>1, -bordercolor=>"red", -cellspacing=>"0", -width=>"80%", -cellpadding=>"0"}, @_); } sub complextable { my $ref = shift; my @righe; foreach my $k (sort keys %{$ref}) { if (ref( $$ref{$k} )) { push @righe, (&tr_center (&td_center ($k,(&table_center (&complextable($$ref{$k})) ) ) ) ) ; } else { push @righe, (&tr_center(&td_center($k, $$ref{$k} ))); } } return @righe; }
    Hope this help. Hope some golf master to squize my homegrown code.

    cheers from sunny Roma
    Lor*

    Originally posted as a Categorized Answer.

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