SQL::Translator::Utils - SQL::Translator Utility functions use SQL::Translator::Utils qw(debug); debug("PKG: Bad things happened"); "SQL::Translator::Utils" contains utility functions designed to be used from the other modules within the "SQL::Translator" modules. Nothing is exported by default.

debug
"debug" takes 0 or more messages, which will be sent to STDERR using "warn". Occurances of the strings PKG, SUB, and LINE will be replaced by the calling package, subroutine, and line number, respectively, as reported by caller(1). For example, from within "foo" in SQL/Translator.pm, at line 666: debug("PKG: Error reading file at SUB/LINE"); Will warn [SQL::Translator: Error reading file at foo/666] The entire message is enclosed within "[" and "]" for visual clarity when STDERR is intermixed with STDOUT.

normalize_name
"normalize_name" takes a string and ensures that it is suitable for use as an identifier. This means: ensure that it starts with a letter or underscore, and that the rest of the string consists of only letters, numbers, and underscores. A string that begins with something other than [a-zA-Z] will be prefixer with an underscore, and all other characters in the string will be replaced with underscores. Finally, a trailing underscore will be removed, because that's ugly. normalize_name("Hello, world"); Produces: Hello_world A more useful example, from the "SQL::Translator::Parser::Excel" test suite: normalize_name("silly field (with random characters)"); returns: silly_field_with_random_characters

header_comment
Create the header comment. Takes 1 mandatory argument (the producer classname), an optional comment character (defaults to $DEFAULT_COMMENT), and 0 or more additional comments, which will be appended to the header, prefixed with the comment character. If additional comments are provided, then a comment string must be provided ($DEFAULT_COMMENT is exported for this use). For example, this: package My::Producer; use SQL::Translator::Utils qw(header_comment $DEFAULT_COMMENT); print header_comment(__PACKAGE__, $DEFAULT_COMMENT, "Hi mom!"); produces: -- -- Created by My::Prodcuer -- Created on Fri Apr 25 06:56:02 2003 -- -- Hi mom! -- Note the gratuitous spacing.

parse_list_arg
Takes a string, list or arrayref (all of which could contain comma-separated values) and returns an array reference of the values. All of the following will return equivalent values: parse_list_arg('id'); parse_list_arg('id', 'name'); parse_list_arg( 'id, name' ); parse_list_arg( [ 'id', 'name' ] ); parse_list_arg( qw[ id name ] );

$DEFAULT_COMMENT
This is the default comment string, '-- ' by default. Useful for "header_comment". Darren Chamberlain <darren@cpan.org>, Ken Y. Clark <kclark@cpan.org>.