B::Terse(3perl)

✨ B::Terse — like, the Perl syntax tree but make it terse ✨

okay bestie, gather round, because this is a page from the Perl Programmers Reference Guide and it's genuinely a lil throwback 💖

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🌸 NAME 🌸

B::Terse — walk the Perl syntax tree and print out terse info about the ops. that's it, that's the whole vibe 🦋

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

perl -MO=Terse[,OPTIONS] foo.pl

like, that's literally it. <italic>OPTIONS</italic> are optional, the comma's just sitting there being cute, foo.pl is your script. slay ✨

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

So. This module prints out the contents of the parse tree — but with way less information than the CPAN module B::Debug gives you. it's giving minimalist. for comparison, the classic:

print "Hello, world."

produced 96 lines of output from B::Debug, but only 6 from B::Terse. not me doing a double take 😭 six. lines. the restraint. the clarity. we love to see it 💖

This module is useful for people who are writing their own back end, or who are learning about the Perl internals. It's not useful to the average programmer. fr fr, if that's you, this is not your page, no hard feelings 🫶

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🌈 the tea about this version 🌈

This version of B::Terse is really just a wrapper that calls B::Concise with the -terse option. It is provided for compatibility with old scripts (and old habits, honestly 💀) but using B::Concise directly is now recommended instead. periodt.

For compatibility with the old B::Terse, this module also adds a method named terse to B::OP and B::SV objects.

• The B::SV method is largely compatible with the old one — though authors of new software might be advised to choose a more user-friendly output format. (gentle suggestion. take it or leave it 💅)
• The B::OP terse method, however, doesn't work well. Since B::Terse was first written, much more information in OPs has migrated to the scratchpad datastructure, but the terse interface doesn't have any way of getting to the correct pad. As a kludge, the new version will always use the pad for the main program, but for OPs in subroutines this will give the wrong answer or crash.

⚠️ okay so that last bit is the actual jumpscare: sub OPs → wrong answer, or straight up crash. consider yourself warned, bestie 😭

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

The original version of B::Terse was written by Malcolm Beattie, <mbeattie@sable.ox.ac.uk>. This wrapper was written by Stephen McCamant, <smcc@MIT.EDU>. legends only 🫶✨

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and that's the whole page, bestie 🌸 this was perl v5.44.0, dated 2026-10-17, filed under B::Terse(3perl) — go forth and walk that syntax tree 💖🦋🎀