Perl -d and modulino issue

Question

I have some scripts that I have started unit-testing using the "modulino" idea. I have encountered a problem in that when the script is called with "perl -d" the script does not run as caller() returns a true value.

I have the main body of the script wrapped in a main() and some subroutines being slowly pulled out of the main() into their own subroutines.

At the top of the script I have:

main(@ARGS) unless caller();

When called in .t tests it works as I want, not running main() so I can test the subroutines. When I call the script from CLI it works great calling main().

The problem occurs when I call it from the CLI with:

perl -d myscript.pl

At this stage caller returns a valid value (rather than undef) and main is not called.

Suggestions would be much appreciated about how to approach this one.

Answer 1

The situation with -d switch is similar as with testing - your code is executed by something else, in this case the debugger.

You can either run main yourself by calling it in the debugger manually or you have to detect if caller is debugger. Something like:

main(@ARGS) if !caller() || (caller)[0] eq 'DB';