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arhuman (1672)
Just another day...
I suppose, it's a sign I should write more here
So for the news
- I managed to screw my debian laptop
(I REALLY broke the pcmcia part and thus the networking part...) - I go on participating to the 'CPAN testing crusade'
(I really like this picture
I have several ongoing projects about it...
Probably more on this soon (I hope) - I'm working on a module with a quite unusual interface (using filter) to assist debugging
I know I should ask to the CPAN mailing list, but maybe some of you have an Idea
What name should I use for a module helping in the Debug Process,
the uncommon aspect is that all the provided functions are called through comments !
For example
my $a; #!watch($a)!
will trigger a monitoring on $a telling me each time $a is accessed
Most of you have already recognized the monitor's idea
described in 'Advanced programming in Perl' from Sriram Srinivasan.
I also have an assert() function (I know there is a Carp::Assert) called the same way through comments.
A wait(<var>,<cond>) which will wait that <var> match the <cond> to carp/croak a message.
and of course a print() function.
As nothing is new you may wonder why I code already existing things.
Well, I thought that the non-intrusive module idea could be interesting
As the functions are called through comments,
all you have to do to trigger on/off the debugging is to comment the 'use <yet-undefined-module-name>;' line...
There will be no remaining debugging code, not even a $DEBUG var...
Furthermore the filter approach helps me (I hope) to hide some unnecessary technical difficulties
(about the watch() feature for example...)
But may be I'm just plain wrong about the whole thing, so any advice (about what to add, the name...
and/or any opinion (about its usefulness, its interface) will be really welcome...
help them think they understand.
--Larry Wall
why not attributes? (Score:1)
my $a : watch;
Beccause I'm following the non-intrusive path. (Score:1)
I mean look at the following code
#use MyDebug; my $a;#!watch($a)! for my $i (1..10) { $a*=$i; } print $a;This is perfectly valid code.
Now If I uncomment the 'use Mydebug;' line it will alsos works,
And I'll get a message each time $a is accessed.
If I understand well the Attribute::Handlers module, there's no easy way to turn on/off the features.
(There will be the 'use AttribDecl;' line and the code will be crippled with ': watch;')
In the e
Re:Beccause I'm following the non-intrusive path. (Score:1)
But appearances count
Plus with attributes typos will be caught (like "wathc") whereas if its in a comment there's no validation. So it has the additional nicety of being a bit more formal.
Re:Beccause I'm following the non-intrusive path. (Score:1)
Point taken...
You're totally right on this.
It's quite hard to find the balance between a simple clean syntax and a syntax which could be clearly distinguished from "normal" comments.
I clearly emphazized the later...
Any suggestion is welcome, I wonder if 'watch($a)' anywhere in a comment wouldn't be enough...
BTW: What would be your proposition for this module's name ?
What about use constant? (Score:1)
Well, you know that use constant doesn't change the behaviour or performance of your program...
use constant DEBUG => 1;if( DEBUG ) {
# debug code is optimised away
# when you set DEBUG to 0
# you can easily check this with B::Deparse
}
Naturally, this adds to the code, but I'd say it's more natural than comments. Or you could use pod: Michael Schwern is working on =for testing, you could as well add =for debug...
Side com