How do I read back in the output of Data::Dumper?

Question

Let\'s say I have a text file created using Data::Dumper, along the lines of:

my $x = [ { foo => \'bar\', asdf => undef }, 0, -4, [ [] ] ];

Answer 1

By default, Data::Dumper output cannot be parsed by eval, especially if the data structure being dumped is circular in some way. However, you can set

$Data::Dumper::Purity = 1;

or

$obj->Purity(1);

where obj is a Data::Dumper object. Either of these will cause Data::Dumper to produce output that can be parsed by eval.

See the Data::Dumper documenatation at CPAN for all the details.