Back to main site | Back to man page index

SPLAIN(1)                                  Perl Programmers Reference Guide                                 SPLAIN(1)



NAME
       diagnostics, splain - produce verbose warning diagnostics

SYNOPSIS
       Using the "diagnostics" pragma:

           use diagnostics;
           use diagnostics -verbose;

           enable  diagnostics;
           disable diagnostics;

       Using the "splain" standalone filter program:

           perl program 2>diag.out
           splain [-v] [-p] diag.out

       Using diagnostics to get stack traces from a misbehaving script:

           perl -Mdiagnostics=-traceonly my_script.pl

DESCRIPTION
   The "diagnostics" Pragma
       This module extends the terse diagnostics normally emitted by both the perl compiler and the perl interpreter
       (from running perl with a -w switch or "use warnings"), augmenting them with the more explicative and
       endearing descriptions found in perldiag.  Like the other pragmata, it affects the compilation phase of your
       program rather than merely the execution phase.

       To use in your program as a pragma, merely invoke

           use diagnostics;

       at the start (or near the start) of your program.  (Note that this does enable perl's -w flag.)  Your whole
       compilation will then be subject(ed :-) to the enhanced diagnostics.  These still go out STDERR.

       Due to the interaction between runtime and compiletime issues, and because it's probably not a very good idea
       anyway, you may not use "no diagnostics" to turn them off at compiletime.  However, you may control their
       behaviour at runtime using the disable() and enable() methods to turn them off and on respectively.

       The -verbose flag first prints out the perldiag introduction before any other diagnostics.  The
       $diagnostics::PRETTY variable can generate nicer escape sequences for pagers.

       Warnings dispatched from perl itself (or more accurately, those that match descriptions found in perldiag) are
       only displayed once (no duplicate descriptions).  User code generated warnings a la warn() are unaffected,
       allowing duplicate user messages to be displayed.

       This module also adds a stack trace to the error message when perl dies.  This is useful for pinpointing what
       caused the death.  The -traceonly (or just -t) flag turns off the explanations of warning messages leaving
       just the stack traces.  So if your script is dieing, run it again with

         perl -Mdiagnostics=-traceonly my_bad_script

       to see the call stack at the time of death.  By supplying the -warntrace (or just -w) flag, any warnings
       emitted will also come with a stack trace.

   The splain Program

           print STDERR "\n\tThis message should be unadorned.\n";
           warn "\tThis is a user warning";
           print "\nDIAGNOSTIC TESTER: Please enter a <CR> here: ";
           my $a, $b = scalar <STDIN>;
           print "\n";
           print $x/$y;

       If you prefer to run your program first and look at its problem afterwards, do this:

           perl -w test.pl 2>test.out
           ./splain < test.out

       Note that this is not in general possible in shells of more dubious heritage, as the theoretical

           (perl -w test.pl >/dev/tty) >& test.out
           ./splain < test.out

       Because you just moved the existing stdout to somewhere else.

       If you don't want to modify your source code, but still have on-the-fly warnings, do this:

           exec 3>&1; perl -w test.pl 2>&1 1>&3 3>&- | splain 1>&2 3>&-

       Nifty, eh?

       If you want to control warnings on the fly, do something like this.  Make sure you do the "use" first, or you
       won't be able to get at the enable() or disable() methods.

           use diagnostics; # checks entire compilation phase
               print "\ntime for 1st bogus diags: SQUAWKINGS\n";
               print BOGUS1 'nada';
               print "done with 1st bogus\n";

           disable diagnostics; # only turns off runtime warnings
               print "\ntime for 2nd bogus: (squelched)\n";
               print BOGUS2 'nada';
               print "done with 2nd bogus\n";

           enable diagnostics; # turns back on runtime warnings
               print "\ntime for 3rd bogus: SQUAWKINGS\n";
               print BOGUS3 'nada';
               print "done with 3rd bogus\n";

           disable diagnostics;
               print "\ntime for 4th bogus: (squelched)\n";
               print BOGUS4 'nada';
               print "done with 4th bogus\n";

INTERNALS
       Diagnostic messages derive from the perldiag.pod file when available at runtime.  Otherwise, they may be
       embedded in the file itself when the splain package is built.   See the Makefile for details.

       If an extant $SIG{__WARN__} handler is discovered, it will continue to be honored, but only after the
       diagnostics::splainthis() function (the module's $SIG{__WARN__} interceptor) has had its way with your

           BEGIN { $diagnostics::PRETTY = 1 }

       I could start up faster by delaying compilation until it should be needed, but this gets a "panic: top_level"
       when using the pragma form in Perl 5.001e.

       While it's true that this documentation is somewhat subserious, if you use a program named splain, you should
       expect a bit of whimsy.

AUTHOR
       Tom Christiansen <[email protected]>, 25 June 1995.



perl v5.16.3                                          2016-11-06                                            SPLAIN(1)