Carp::Trace - simple traceback of call stacks

    use Carp::Trace;

    sub flubber {
        die "You took this route to get here:\n" .
            trace();
    }

Carp::Trace provides an easy way to see the route your script took to get to a certain place. It uses simple caller calls to determine this.

trace is a function, exported by default, that gives a simple traceback of how you got where you are. It returns a formatted string, ready to be sent to STDOUT or STDERR.

Optionally, you can provide a DEPTH argument, which tells trace to only go back so many levels. The OFFSET argument will tell trace to skip the first [OFFSET] layers up.

If you provide a true value for the ARGS parameter, the arguments passed to each callstack will be dumped using Data::Dumper. This might slow down your trace, but is very useful for debugging.

See also the Global Variables section.

trace is able to tell you the following things:

• The name of the function
• The number of callstacks from your current location
• The context in which the function was called
• Whether a new instance of @_ was created for this function
• Whether the function was called in an eval, require or use
• If called from a string eval, what the eval-string is
• The file the function is in
• The line number the function is on

The output from the following code:

    use Carp::Trace;

    sub foo { bar() };
    sub bar { $x = baz() };
    sub baz { @y = zot() };
    sub zot { print trace() };

    eval 'foo(1)';

Might look something like this:

    main::(eval) [5]
        foo(1);
        void - no new stash
        x.pl line 1
    main::foo [4]
        void - new stash
        (eval 1) line 1
    main::bar [3]
        void - new stash
        x.pl line 1
    main::baz [2]
        scalar - new stash
        x.pl line 1
    main::zot [1]
        list - new stash
        x.pl line 1

Sets the depth to be used by default for trace. Any depth argument to trace will override this setting.

Sets the offset to be used by default for trace. Any offset argument to trace will override this setting.

Sets a flag to indicate that a trace should dump all arguments for every call stack it's printing out. Any args argument to trace will override this setting.

This module by Jos Boumans <kane@cpan.org>.

This module is copyright (c) 2002 Jos Boumans <kane@cpan.org>. All rights reserved.

This library is free software; you may redistribute and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.