From: Mark Thomas <mark@...>
Date: 2009-09-04T09:35:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Data::Dumper for Ruby?

On Sep 3, 11:00 am, Josef Wolf <j...@raven.inka.de> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am new to Ruby and am about to start my first application that exceeds the
> size of gello.rb ;-)
>
> One of the first things I am missing is something like perl's Data::Dumper
> module.  This module is able to take a (nested) data structure and dump it
> in perl syntax.
>
> Anybody knows of a similar thing for ruby?

An ex-perl hacker, I used to use Data::Dumper all the time. Now in
ruby, I find that I don't need the equivalent. I tend to think in
terms of classes and attributes instead of nested data structures. I
can poke around in my class structure in irb.

I think you'll eventually realize that in Perl, there is a tendency to
overuse data structures because it is the most convenient way of
storing data. In ruby there are better ways. This reminds me of an old
post of mine: http://markthomas.org/2008/02/16/language-comparisons-are-always-flawed/
which, although not about Perl per se, covers the same issue.