Perl PadWalker does not display variables declared with "our"

Question

Having some problems with Perl debugger in Eclipse and PadWalker. Only used it for simple one-file scripts before. Variables declared using "my". They appear fine in the debugger "variables" window.

Now I am using someone else's more complicated script and I don't see the variables declared using "our". To investigate, I boiled it down to one very simple example

junk.pl:

use strict;
use warnings;

require 'junk2.pl';

package Junk;
my $simon = "SOMETHING";
print "JUNK  " . $Junk2::james . "\n";
print "JUNK  " . $simon . "\n";

junk2.pl:

package Junk2;
our $james;
$james = "FOO";

1;

Stepping through the code, the vairable my $simon displays in the debugger window fine but variable our $james does not. The debugger is working OK: the program runs and the output window shows the correct output... it's just the variables window that fails to show $james.

The screen shot below demonstrates the problem. As you can see the variable $james from the Junk2 package prints ok, but does not appear in the variables display.

Been searching a while for a solution but can't find anything that matches well... any ideas?

EDIT: Have found out that I can "see" the package variables if I use the Perl debugger: .

Is there a way to have the same output in a friendly manner in the IDE like padwalker shows?

Thank you to guys who have answered so far :)

Answer 1

In the Eclipse Debug Configuration at -X to the Perl command line to show current package variables.

Edit:

In this case you might need to use the -V command instead. See http://perldoc.perl.org/perldebug.html

Edit:

It would probably be easier to just assign the Junk2::James variable to local variable.

my $james = $Junk2::james;

Answer 2

Variables declared with our are lexical variables, aliased to package variables (thank you @ikegami for the correction):

our makes a lexical alias to a package variable of the same name in the current package for use within the current lexical scope.

brian d foy has a recent post discussing symbol tables.

The short answer is, you access package variables by looking at the package's symbol table.

In addition, PadWalker has a peek_our method. Package::Stash provides other useful helpers.

Answer 3

You can toggle viewing local and global variables under the variables view menu. Variables declared with our are outside of the local scope, and are therefore visible when the global variables option is selected. (I am running eclipse 4.2.1)

To access the variables view menu click the small down arrow on the top right of the variables pane.