Question

I am using Data::Dumper::Dumper() method. The output is good, but can be made little compact and more good looking.

How I can control it? What are the better alternatives?

Answer 1

Take a look at Data::Dump for something similar to Data::Dumper but arguably better at pretty printing.

Edit (20120304): I had completely forgotten this question, but it was upvoted today and that jogged my memory. If I had to recommend anything today (3 years later) for pretty printing in Perl, I would certainly go with Data::Printer. From Data::Printer’s own Rationale:

Data::Dumper is a fantastic tool, meant to stringify data structures in a way they are suitable for being eval‘ed back in.

The thing is, a lot of people keep using it (and similar ones, like Data::Dump) to print data structures and objects on screen for inspection and debugging, and while you can use those modules for that, it doesn’t mean mean you should.

This is where Data::Printer comes in. It is meant to do one thing and one thing only:
display Perl variables and objects on screen, properly formatted (to be inspected by a human)