Get variable name as string in Perl

Question

I am trying to get a text representation of a variable's name. For instance, this would be the function I am looking for:

$abc = '123';
$var_name = &get_var_name($abc); #returns '$abc'

I want this because I am trying to write a debug function that recursively outputs the contents of a passed variable. I want it to output the variable's name before hand so if I call this debug function 100 times in succession, there will be no confusion as to which variable I am looking at in the output.

I have heard of Data::Dumper and am not a fan. If someone can tell me how to if it's possible get a string of a variable's name, that would be great.

Answer 1

Data::Dumper::Simple

use warnings;
use strict;
use Data::Dumper::Simple;

my $abc = '123';
my ($var_name) = split /=/, Dumper($abc);
print $var_name, "\n";

__END__

$abc