10/10/2013

Debugging

Contents
 Safety Net
 Warnings
 Command Line Flags
 Fatal Warnings
 Strict Checks – Refs, Vars and Subs
 Diagnostic Messages Pragma
 The “splain” Program
 Perl Debugger
 Debugger Commands
 Carp Module
 Carping, Croaking and Confessing

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Contents
 The Devel::Peek Module
 Data Diagnostic tool

Contents
 The grep Operator
 List Operators
 Context

 Initializing Arrays & Hashes

 Reference Syntax
 Auto-vivification

 Other list operators

 Usage of map, grep and foreach

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Objectives
 In this session we will learn how to
 Perl‟s pragma to control optional warnings.
 Use warning command line flags
 Strict checks on reference, variables and subroutines
 Perl‟s pragma to extend concise diagnostics
 Using the „splain‟ utility
 Debugging Perl programs using the debugger.
 Understand the common Perl debugger commands.
 Perl‟s pragma for run-time analysis when using modules.
 Data debugging tool for XS Programmers.

Safety Net
 Perl by default is very forgiving.
 To make it more robust it is recommended to start
every program with the following lines:
 use strict;
 use warnings;

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Warnings
 Perl pragma to control optional warnings.
 Thewarnings pragma is a replacement for the
command line flag -w
 Difference
 The warnings pragma is limited to the enclosing
block.
 The flag –w is global
 To suppress warnings
 no warnings;

Warnings
 Use Perl‟s $^W variable to enable or disable
warnings in a block of code.
 You can inadvertently change the warning setting.

{
local ($^W) = 0; # Disable warnings
my $a =+ 10;
}

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Warnings – Command Line Flags

 Thereare three Command Line flags that can be
used to control when warnings are (or aren't)
produced.
 The –w flag

 The –W flag will enable warnings throughout the

program whether warnings were disabled locally.
 This includes all files included via use or require.

 The –X flag does the opposite of the –W flag.

Fatal Warnings
 The presence of the word "FATAL" in the category
list will escalate any warnings detected into fatal
errors.
use warnings;
# Example to illustrate FATAL warnings.
time;

{
use warnings FATAL => qw(void);
length "abc";
}
join "", 1,2,3;
print "done\n";

 To downgrade a warning that has been escalated

into a fatal use the "NONFATAL" keyword.

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Strict Checks
 Perlpragma to restrict unsafe scope, references,
variables and subroutines.
 use strict;
 Strict References
 use strict “refs”;
 Generates a run-time error if you use symbolic
references.
use strict 'refs';
$ref = \$var;
print $$ref; # ok
$ref = "Perl";
print $$ref; # runtime error; normally ok
$file = "STDOUT";
print $file "Hi!"; # error;

Strict Checks
 Strict Variables
 use strict “vars”;
 Generates a compile-time error if you access a
variable that wasn't declared via our or my, or
wasn't fully qualified

use strict ‘vars';

our $var = 125;
my $var = 'Some Text';

print "Private var = $var\n";

local $var = 12.34; # Error

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Strict Checks
 Strict Subroutines
 use strict “subs”;
 Generates a compile-time error if you try to use a
bareword identifier

sub Test
{
print "Hello from subroutine.\n";
}

use strict 'subs';

my $ref = Test; # Error
$ref->();

Diagnostic Messages
 Various diagnostic messages are classified as
follows:
 perldoc perldiag

Diagnostic Messages
Character Description
W A warning (optional).
D A deprecation (enabled by default).
S A severe warning (enabled by default).
F A fatal error (trappable).
P An internal error you should never see (trappable).
X A very fatal error (nontrappable).
A An alien error message (not generated by Perl).

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Diagnostics Pragma
 Extends concise diagnostics augmenting with
more explicative and endearing descriptions found
in perldiag.
 Enables perl‟s –w flag.
 The -verbose flag first prints out the perldiag
introduction before any other diagnostics.
 Also adds a stack trace to the error message.
 The -traceonly (or just -t) flag turns off the
explanations of warning messages leaving just the
stack traces.
perl -Mdiagnostics=-traceonly my_bad_script

Diagnostics Pragma
 We can enable and disable diagnostics.
 enable diagnostics;
 disable diagnostics;

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The “splain” Program

A link to diagnostics.pm module as well as a link
to the diagnostics.pod documentation.

 The –v flag is like “use diagnostics –verbose”

directive.

 The –p flag is like “$diagnostics::PRETTY”

variable.

perl -w test.pl 2> test.out

./splain < test.out

Perl Debugger
 Let us
 Examine source code,
 Set breakpoints,
 Change the values of variables,
 Dump out function-call stack, and so on
 The debugger uses the DB package for its own
state information.

 The –d flag tells the compiler to insert source

information into the parse trees it's about to hand
off to the interpreter.

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Perl Debugger
 Thecode must first compile correctly for the
debugger to work on it.

perl -d test.pl

Debugger Commands
 The Perl Debugger uses the following commands.
Debugger Commands
Command Description
h [cmd] Print out a help message.
l List next few lines.
l min+incr List (incr+1) lines starting at min.
l min-max List lines min through max.
l line List a single line.
l subname List first few lines of a subroutine.
- List previous few lines.
b [line][cond] Set a breakpoint at line.
Example: b 233 $x > 10
b subname Set a (possible conditional) breakpoint at the
first line of named subroutine.

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Debugger Commands
 The Perl Debugger uses the following commands.
Debugger Commands
Command Description
d [line] Delete a breakpoint at the specified line.
D Delete all installed breakpoints.
p expr Print expr
x expr Evaluate its expression in a list context and
dump out the result.
s [expr] Single step.
n [expr] Next. Execute over subroutine calls, until the
beginning of the next statement.
r Return from current subroutine. OR run.
<CR> Repeat last “n” or “s” command.
c [line|sub] Continue, optionally insert a one-time breakpoint

Debugger Commands
 The Perl Debugger uses the following commands.
Debugger Commands
Command Description
/pattern/ Search forward for pattern.
?pattern? Search backward for pattern.
L [abw] List (default all) actions, breakpoints and watch
expressions.
S [! regex] List subroutine names.
T Produce a stack back trace.
a [line] cmd Set action to be done before the line is
executed.
A line Delete an action from the specified line.
w expr Add a global watch-expression.
W expr Delete watch-expression.

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Debugger Commands
 The Perl Debugger uses the following commands.
Debugger Commands
Command Description
! number Redo a previous command
H Display all previous commands
q OR ^D Quit
command Execute command as a Perl statement.
m expr List method to call on evaluating the
expression.
M Display all loaded modules and their versions.

Carp Module
 Useful in your own modules.

for die and warn functions from caller‟s

 Alternative
perspective.

 Helpful in run-time analysis.

 Functions
 carp( ) - Similar to warn in user module.
 croak( ) - Similar to die in user module.
 confess( ) – Gives function call history. Also called
stack trace.

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Devel::Peek Module
A data debugging tool for the XS programmer.
 Contains functions which allows raw Perl
datatypes to be manipulated from a Perl script.
 Used to check that the data they are sending from
C to Perl looks as they think it should look.
 Functions
 Dump( ) - dump a raw Perl data type.
 DumpArray( ) – allows to dump multiple values.
 mstat( ) – function to report memory usage.

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