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Revision: 1.12
Committed: Fri Jul 11 21:09:30 2008 UTC (15 years, 10 months ago) by root
Branch: MAIN
Changes since 1.11: +11 -8 lines
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File Contents

# Content
1 package Devel::FindRef;
2
3 use strict;
4
5 use XSLoader;
6 use Scalar::Util;
7
8 BEGIN {
9 our $VERSION = '1.2';
10 XSLoader::load __PACKAGE__, $VERSION;
11 }
12
13 =head1 NAME
14
15 Devel::FindRef - where is that reference to my scalar hiding?
16
17 =head1 SYNOPSIS
18
19 use Devel::FindRef;
20
21 =head1 DESCRIPTION
22
23 Tracking down reference problems (e.g. you expect some object to be
24 destroyed, but there are still references to it that keep it alive) can be
25 very hard. Fortunately, perl keeps track of all its values, so tracking
26 references "backwards" is usually possible.
27
28 The C<track> function can help track down some of those references back to
29 the variables containing them.
30
31 For example, for this fragment:
32
33 package Test;
34
35 our $var = "hi\n";
36 my $x = \$var;
37 our %hash = (ukukey => \$var);
38 our $hash2 = {ukukey2 => \$var};
39
40 sub testsub {
41 my $local = $hash2;
42 print Devel::FindRef::track \$var;
43 }
44
45 testsub;
46
47 The output is as follows (or similar to this, in case I forget to update
48 the manpage after some changes):
49
50 SCALAR(0x7bd2d0) is
51 in the global $Test::var.
52 referenced by REF(0x7bd240), which is
53 in the member 'ukukey2' of HASH(0x7bd228), which is
54 referenced by REF(0x81dae8), which is
55 in the lexical '$local' in CODE(0x81da88), which is
56 in the global &Test::testsub.
57 referenced by REF(0x81da40), which is
58 in the global $Test::hash2.
59 referenced by REF(0x79f3f8), which is
60 in the lexical '$x' in CODE(0x79f518), which is
61 the containing scope for CODE(0x81da88), which is
62 in the global &Test::testsub.
63 referenced by REF(0x79f2f0), which is
64 not found anywhere I looked :(
65 referenced by REF(0x79f140), which is
66 in the member 'ukukey' of HASH(0x81d698), which is
67 in the global %Test::hash.
68
69 It is a bit convoluted to read, but basically it says that the value
70 stored in C<$var> can be found:
71
72 =over 4
73
74 =item - in some variable C<$x> whose origin is not known (I frankly have no
75 idea why, hints accepted).
76
77 =item - in the hash element with key C<ukukey> in the hash stored in C<%Test::hash>.
78
79 =item - in the global variable named C<$Test::var>.
80
81 =item - in the hash element C<ukukey2>, in the hash in the my variable
82 C<$local> in the sub C<Test::testsub> and also in the hash referenced by
83 C<$Test::hash2>.
84
85 =back
86
87 =head1 EXPORTS
88
89 None.
90
91 =head1 FUNCTIONS
92
93 =over 4
94
95 =item $string = Devel::FindRef::track $ref[, $depth]
96
97 Track the perl value pointed to by C<$ref> up to a depth of C<$depth> and
98 return a descriptive string. C<$ref> can point at any perl value, be it
99 anonymous sub, hash, array, scalar etc.
100
101 This is the function you most often use.
102
103 =cut
104
105 sub find($);
106
107 sub track {
108 my ($ref, $depth) = @_;
109 @_ = ();
110
111 my $buf = "";
112 my %seen;
113
114 Scalar::Util::weaken $ref;
115
116 my $track; $track = sub {
117 my ($refref, $depth, $indent) = @_;
118
119 if ($depth) {
120 my (@about) = find $$refref;
121 if (@about) {
122 for my $about (@about) {
123 $buf .= "$indent" . (@about > 1 ? "+- " : " ") . $about->[0];
124 if (@$about > 1) {
125 if ($seen{$about->[1]+0}++) {
126 $buf .= " $about->[1], which was seen before.\n";
127 } else {
128 $buf .= " $about->[1], which is\n";
129 $track->(\$about->[1], $depth - 1, $about == $about[-1] ? "$indent " : "$indent| ");
130 }
131 } else {
132 $buf .= ".\n";
133 }
134 }
135 } else {
136 $buf .= "$indent not found anywhere I looked :(\n";
137 }
138 } else {
139 $buf .= "$indent not referenced within the search depth.\n";
140 }
141 };
142
143 $buf .= "$ref is\n";
144 $track->(\$ref, $depth || $ENV{PERL_DEVEL_FINDREF_DEPTH} || 10, "");
145 $buf
146 }
147
148 =item @references = Devel::FindRef::find $ref
149
150 Return arrayrefs that contain [$message, $ref] pairs. The message
151 describes what kind of reference was found and the C<$ref> is the
152 reference itself, which can be omitted if C<find> decided to end the
153 search. The returned references are all weak references.
154
155 The C<track> function uses this to find references to the value you are
156 interested in and recurses on the returned references.
157
158 =cut
159
160 sub find($) {
161 my ($about, $excl) = &find_;
162 my %excl = map +($_ => undef), @$excl;
163 grep !exists $excl{$_->[1] + 0}, @$about
164 }
165
166 =item $ref = Devel::FindRef::ptr2ref $integer
167
168 Sometimes you know (from debugging output) the address of a perl scalar
169 you are interested in (e.g. C<HASH(0x176ff70)>). This function can be used
170 to turn the address into a reference to that scalar. It is quite safe to
171 call on valid addresses, but extremely dangerous to call on invalid ones.
172
173 # we know that HASH(0x176ff70) exists, so turn it into a hashref:
174 my $ref_to_hash = Devel::FindRef::ptr2ref 0x176ff70;
175
176 =back
177
178 =head1 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
179
180 You can set the environment variable C<PERL_DEVEL_FINDREF_DEPTH> to an
181 integer to override the default depth in C<track>. If a call explicitly
182 specified a depth it is not overridden.
183
184 =head1 AUTHOR
185
186 Marc Lehmann <pcg@goof.com>.
187
188 =head1 BUGS
189
190 Only code values, arrays, hashes, scalars and magic are being looked at.
191
192 This is a quick hack only.
193
194 =head1 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
195
196 Copyright (C) 2007 by Marc Lehmann.
197
198 This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
199 it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.8 or,
200 at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.
201
202 =cut
203
204 1
205