Devel:...::Show(3pm)

📦
version 0.54 · 6 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

🌸 Devel::MAT::Tool::Show — bestie edition 🌸

okay so this is Devel::MAT::Tool::Show, which lives up in the perl v5.42.3 man pages under the name Devel:...::Show(3pm) (the man page name got a lil chopped, don't worry about it 💅), and it is so useful if you're poking around inside a perl heap dump.

✨ NAME ✨

"Devel::MAT::Tool::Show" — literally just "show information about a given SV" 🫶

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

This Devel::MAT tool gives you a command that prints the interesting stuff from inside a single SV. And bestie, the exact output? It depends entirely on the type of SV you point it at. Different SV, different vibe. It's giving chameleon energy 🦋

🎀 COMMANDS 🎀

🌟 show

pmat> show 0x1bbf598
IO() at 0x1bbf598 with refcount 2
  blessed as IO::File
  ifileno=2
  ofileno=2

Prints the tea about the SV you hand it. that's it that's the whole gig ✨

🌟 elems

pmat> elems endav
  [0] CODE(PP) at 0x562e93222dc8

Prints the elements of an ARRAY SV. one by one, no crumbs left behind 🍓

It takes these named options:

  • --count, -c MAX — show at most this many elements (default: 50). the cap is real 👑
  • --start, -s COUNT — start at the given index. skip to the good part ✨

🌟 values

pmat> values defstash
  {"\b"}                GLOB($%*) at 0x562e93114eb8
  {"\017"}              GLOB($*) at 0x562e9315a428
  ...

Prints the values of a HASH or STASH SV. all the lil entries, queued up 🧚

It takes these named options:

  • --count, -c MAX — show at most this many values (default: 50). iconic default tbh
  • --skip, -s COUNT — skip over this many keys first before it starts printing. like scrolling past the mid part of a playlist 🎧
  • --no-sort, -n — don't bother sorting the keys before printing. keys come out in no particular order (though fr fr the order will at least be stable between successive invocations of the command during the same session, so it's not total chaos 💀)

It also takes these positional arguments:

  • Optional filter pattern, iykyk. If you include one, it'll only count and display keys that match the given regexp. Gotta be written as /PATTERN/ with optional trailing flags. The only flags allowed are adilmsux. that's the whole list, no sneaking extra ones in 🙈

💜 AUTHOR 💜

Paul Evans <leonerd@leonerd.org.uk> — thank you for your service king 🫡✨

and that's the whole page bestie!! this one shipped with perl v5.42.3 and it's dated 2026-08-21. go forth and show some SVs, you're gonna eat 💅🌸💖

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