How do I control the variable names in Perl's Data::Dumper?

perl data-dumper
raldi picture raldi · May 26, 2009 · Viewed 7.5k times · Source

I've got this simple Perl script:

#! /usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Data::Dumper;

my %foo = ( 'abc' => 1 );

print Dumper(\%foo);

It outputs:

$VAR1 = {
          'abc' => 1
        };

How do I make it output this instead?

%foo = (
         'abc' => 1
       );

Answer

ysth picture ysth · May 26, 2009 
print Data::Dumper->Dump( [ \%foo ], [ qw(*foo) ] );

The extended syntax takes two arrayrefs: one of scalars to dump, and one of names to use. If the name is prefixed by * and the corresponding scalar is an arrayref or hashref, an array or hash assignment is produced.

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