Provided by: libdevel-cycle-perl_1.12-2_all bug

NAME

       Devel::Cycle - Find memory cycles in objects

SYNOPSIS

         #!/usr/bin/perl
         use Devel::Cycle;
         my $test = {fred   => [qw(a b c d e)],
                   ethel  => [qw(1 2 3 4 5)],
                   george => {martha => 23,
                              agnes  => 19}
                  };
         $test->{george}{phyllis} = $test;
         $test->{fred}[3]      = $test->{george};
         $test->{george}{mary} = $test->{fred};
         find_cycle($test);
         exit 0;

         # output:

         Cycle (1):
                               $A->{'george'} => \%B
                              $B->{'phyllis'} => \%A

         Cycle (2):
                               $A->{'george'} => \%B
                                 $B->{'mary'} => \@A
                                      $A->[3] => \%B

         Cycle (3):
                                 $A->{'fred'} => \@A
                                      $A->[3] => \%B
                              $B->{'phyllis'} => \%A

         Cycle (4):
                                 $A->{'fred'} => \@A
                                      $A->[3] => \%B
                                 $B->{'mary'} => \@A

         # you can also check weakened references
         weaken($test->{george}->{phyllis});
         find_weakened_cycle($test);
         exit 0;

         # output:

         Cycle (1):
                               $A->{'george'} => \%B
                                 $B->{'mary'} => \@C
                                      $C->[3] => \%B

         Cycle (2):
                               $A->{'george'} => \%B
                          w-> $B->{'phyllis'} => \%A

         Cycle (3):
                                 $A->{'fred'} => \@C
                                      $C->[3] => \%B
                                 $B->{'mary'} => \@C

         Cycle (4):
                                 $A->{'fred'} => \@C
                                      $C->[3] => \%B
                          w-> $B->{'phyllis'} => \%A

DESCRIPTION

       This is a simple developer's tool for finding circular references in objects and other
       types of references.  Because of Perl's reference-count based memory management, circular
       references will cause memory leaks.

   EXPORT
       The find_cycle() and find_weakened_cycle() subroutine are exported by default.

       find_cycle($object_reference,[$callback])
           The find_cycle() function will traverse the object reference and print a report to
           STDOUT identifying any memory cycles it finds.

           If an optional callback code reference is provided, then this callback will be invoked
           on each cycle that is found.  The callback will be passed an array reference pointing
           to a list of lists with the following format:

            $arg = [ ['REFTYPE',$index,$reference,$reference_value],
                     ['REFTYPE',$index,$reference,$reference_value],
                     ['REFTYPE',$index,$reference,$reference_value],
                      ...
                   ]

           Each element in the array reference describes one edge in the memory cycle.  'REFTYPE'
           describes the type of the reference and is one of 'SCALAR','ARRAY' or 'HASH'.  $index
           is the index affected by the reference, and is undef for a scalar, an integer for an
           array reference, or a hash key for a hash.  $reference is the memory reference, and
           $reference_value is its dereferenced value.  For example, if the edge is an ARRAY,
           then the following relationship holds:

              $reference->[$index] eq $reference_value

           The first element of the array reference is the $object_reference that you passed to
           find_cycle() and may not be directly involved in the cycle.

           If a reference is a weak ref produced using Scalar::Util's weaken() function then it
           won't contribute to cycles.

       find_weakened_cycle($object_reference,[$callback])
           The find_weakened_cycle() function will traverse the object reference and print a
           report to STDOUT identifying any memory cycles it finds, including any weakened cycles
           produced using Scalar::Util's weaken().

           If an optional callback code reference is provided, then this callback will be invoked
           on each cycle that is found.  The callback will be passed an array reference pointing
           to a list of lists with the following format:

            $arg = [ ['REFTYPE',$index,$reference,$reference_value,$is_weakened],
                     ['REFTYPE',$index,$reference,$reference_value,$is_weakened],
                     ['REFTYPE',$index,$reference,$reference_value,$is_weakened],
                      ...
                   ]

           Each element in the array reference describes one edge in the memory cycle.  'REFTYPE'
           describes the type of the reference and is one of 'SCALAR','ARRAY' or 'HASH'.  $index
           is the index affected by the reference, and is undef for a scalar, an integer for an
           array reference, or a hash key for a hash.  $reference is the memory reference, and
           $reference_value is its dereferenced value. $is_weakened is a boolean specifying if
           the reference is weakened or not. For example, if the edge is an ARRAY, then the
           following relationship holds:

              $reference->[$index] eq $reference_value

           The first element of the array reference is the $object_reference that you passed to
           find_cycle() and may not be directly involved in the cycle.

   Cycle Report Formats
       The default callback prints out a trace of each cycle it finds.  You can control the
       format of the trace by setting the package variable $Devel::Cycle::FORMATTING to one of
       "raw," "cooked," or "roasted".

       The "raw" format prints out anonymous memory references using standard Perl memory
       location nomenclature.  For example, a "Foo::Bar" object that points to an ordinary hash
       will appear in the trace like this:

               Foo::Bar=HASH(0x8124394)->{'phyllis'} => HASH(0x81b4a90)

       The "cooked" format (the default), uses short names for anonymous memory locations,
       beginning with "A" and moving upward with the magic ++ operator.  This leads to a much
       more readable display:

               $Foo::Bar=B->{'phyllis'} => \%A

       The "roasted" format is similar to the "cooked" format, except that object references are
       formatted slightly differently:

               $Foo::Bar::B->{'phyllis'} => \%A

       If a reference is a weakened ref, then it will have a 'w->' prepended to it, like this:

               w-> $Foo::Bar::B->{'phyllis'} => \%A

       For your convenience, $Devel::Cycle::FORMATTING can be imported:

              use Devel::Cycle qw(:DEFAULT $FORMATTING);
              $FORMATTING = 'raw';

       Alternatively, you can control the formatting at compile time by passing one of the
       options -raw, -cooked, or -roasted to "use" as illustrated here:

         use Devel::Cycle -raw;

   Code references (closures)
       If the PadWalker module is installed, Devel::Cycle will also report cycles in code
       closures. If PadWalker is not installed and Devel::Cycle detects a CODE reference in one
       of the data structures, it will warn (once per data structure) that it cannot inspect the
       CODE unless PadWalker is available. You can turn this warning off by passing -quiet to
       Devel::Cycle at compile time:

        use Devel::Cycle -quiet;

SEE ALSO

       Test::Memory::Cycle Devel::Leak Scalar::Util

DEVELOPING

       https://github.com/lstein/Devel-Cycle. Please contribute to the code base by sending pull
       requests. Use GitHub for bug reports and feature requests.

AUTHOR

       Lincoln Stein, <lincoln.stein@gmail.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

       Copyright (C) 2003-2014 by Lincoln Stein

       This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
       terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.2 or, at your option, any later version of
       Perl 5 you may have available.