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Revision: 1.8
Committed: Wed Nov 28 12:20:33 2007 UTC (16 years, 5 months ago) by root
Branch: MAIN
CVS Tags: rel-1_0
Changes since 1.7: +1 -2 lines
Log Message:
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File Contents

# Content
1 package Devel::FindRef;
2
3 use strict;
4
5 use XSLoader;
6
7 BEGIN {
8 our $VERSION = '1.0';
9 XSLoader::load __PACKAGE__, $VERSION;
10 }
11
12 =head1 NAME
13
14 Devel::FindRef - where is that reference to my scalar hiding?
15
16 =head1 SYNOPSIS
17
18 use Devel::FindRef;
19
20 =head1 DESCRIPTION
21
22 Tracking down reference problems (e.g. you expect some object to be
23 destroyed, but there are still references to it that keep it alive) can be
24 very hard. Fortunately, perl keeps track of all its values, so tracking
25 references "backwards" is usually possible.
26
27 The C<track> function can help track down some of those references back to
28 the variables containing them.
29
30 For example, for this fragment:
31
32 package Test;
33
34 our $var = "hi\n";
35 my $x = \$var;
36 our %hash = (ukukey => \$var);
37 our $hash2 = {ukukey2 => \$var};
38
39 sub testsub {
40 my $local = $hash2;
41 print Devel::FindRef::track \$var;
42 }
43
44 testsub;
45
46 The output is as follows (or similar to this, in case I forget to update
47 the manpage after some changes):
48
49 SCALAR(0x676fa0) is
50 referenced by REF(0x676fb0), which is
51 in the lexical '$x' in CODE(0x676370), which is
52 not found anywhere I looked :(
53 referenced by REF(0x676360), which is
54 in the member 'ukukey' of HASH(0x756660), which is
55 in the global %Test::hash.
56 in the global $Test::var.
57 referenced by REF(0x6760e0), which is
58 in the member 'ukukey2' of HASH(0x676f30), which is
59 referenced by REF(0x77bcf0), which is
60 in the lexical '$local' in CODE(0x77bcb0), which is
61 in the global &Test::testsub.
62 referenced by REF(0x77bc80), which is
63 in the global $Test::hash2.
64
65
66 It is a bit convoluted to read, but basically it says that the value
67 stored in C<$var> can be found:
68
69 =over 4
70
71 =item - in some variable C<$x> whose origin is not known (I frankly have no
72 idea why, hints accepted).
73
74 =item - in the hash element with key C<ukukey> in the hash stored in C<%Test::hash>.
75
76 =item - in the global variable named C<$Test::var>.
77
78 =item - in the hash element C<ukukey2>, in the hash in the my variable
79 C<$local> in the sub C<Test::testsub> and also in the hash referenced by
80 C<$Test::hash2>.
81
82 =back
83
84 =head1 EXPORTS
85
86 None.
87
88 =head1 FUNCTIONS
89
90 =over 4
91
92 =item $string = Devel::FindRef::track $ref[, $depth]
93
94 Track the perl value pointed to by C<$ref> up to a depth of C<$depth> and
95 return a descriptive string. C<$ref> can point at any perl value, be it
96 anonymous sub, hash, array, scalar etc.
97
98 This is the function you most often use.
99
100 =cut
101
102 sub find($);
103
104 sub track {
105 my $buf = "";
106 my %ignore;
107
108 my $track; $track = sub {
109 my ($target, $depth, $indent) = @_;
110 @_ = ();
111 local $ignore{$target+0} = undef;
112
113 if ($depth) {
114 my (@about) = grep !exists $ignore{$_->[1]}, find $target;
115 if (@about) {
116 local @ignore{map $_->[1]+0, @about} = ();
117 for my $about (@about) {
118 local $ignore{$about+0} = undef;
119 $buf .= (" ") x $indent;
120 $buf .= $about->[0];
121 if (@$about > 1) {
122 $buf .= " $about->[1], which is\n";
123 $track->($about->[1], $depth - 1, $indent + 1);
124 } else {
125 $buf .= ".\n";
126 }
127 }
128 } else {
129 $buf .= (" ") x $indent;
130 $buf .= "not found anywhere I looked :(\n";
131 }
132 } else {
133 $buf .= (" ") x $indent;
134 $buf .= "not referenced within the search depth.\n";
135 }
136 };
137
138 $buf .= "$_[0] is\n";
139 $track->($_[0], $_[1] || 10, 1);
140 $buf
141 }
142
143 =item @references = Devel::FindRef::find $ref
144
145 Return arrayrefs that contain [$message, $ref] pairs. The message
146 describes what kind of reference was found and the C<$ref> is the
147 reference itself, which cna be omitted if C<find> decided to end the
148 search.
149
150 The C<track> function uses this to find references to the value you are
151 interested in and recurses on the returned references.
152
153 =cut
154
155 sub find($) {
156 my ($about, $excl) = &find_;
157 my %excl = map +($_ => undef), @$excl;
158 grep !exists $excl{$_->[1] + 0}, @$about
159 }
160
161 =item $ref = Devel::FindRef::ptr2ref $integer
162
163 Sometimes you know (from debugging output) the address of a perl scalar
164 you are interested in (e.g. C<HASH(0x176ff70)>). This function can be used
165 to turn the address into a reference to that scalar. It is quite safe to
166 call on valid addresses, but extremely dangerous to call on invalid ones.
167
168 # we know that HASH(0x176ff70) exists, so turn it into a hashref:
169 my $ref_to_hash = Devel::FindRef::ptr2ref 0x176ff70;
170
171 =back
172
173 =head1 AUTHOR
174
175 Marc Lehmann <pcg@goof.com>.
176
177 =head1 BUGS
178
179 Only code values, arrays, hashes, scalars and magic are being looked at.
180
181 This is a quick hack only.
182
183 =head1 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
184
185 Copyright (C) 2007 by Marc Lehmann.
186
187 This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
188 it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.8 or,
189 at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.
190
191 =cut
192
193 1
194