Re: Using the Perl Debugger (-d)

[liverpole]

The same goes for me.  The Perl debugger is one of those tools that I keep meaning to learn more about.

However, in my case I think it's because I have a background in C.  I've used several debuggers for compiled C code, but I always come back to using one of 2 things:  printf( ... ), and some mechanism of saving data to a logfile.

Part of my rationale in debugging that way in "C" is that it's best to take a "minimally invasive" approach when it comes to debugging.  If you have to recompile your program to support debugging, there's often a chance that you've changed the behavior of the bug; possibly even eradicated it.

One of the things I do at work is maintain the local Bugzilla code.  Whenever a tricky bug is found (as one was just this morning), the first thing I do is replicate the code and the mysql database to a test version on the same server (using a Perl script, of course ;-)), and then use some Perl subroutines to either print the data to the webpage, or save it to a logfile.  Once I've found and fixed the bug, I can migrate it back to the real version of the server fairly quickly.

So as I say, I'll learn about the debugger one of these days, I'm sure.  But when it comes to getting real work done, sometimes the old ways are the best.