Question

I usually use perl -de 42 for obtaining an interactive Perl shell. I have seen Devel::REPL and I have seen some blogs like http://www.xenoterracide.com/2010/07/making-repl-usable.html explaining how you can enhance Devel::REPL with the plugins, but I have not used yet.

Is it too bad to use the debugger as an interactive shell? Why?

Note:
the disadvantages mentioned in this PerlMonks node were limitations of the user, not of the Perl debugger.

Where can I read more about Perl REPL?

Is Devel::REPL ready for the limelight?

UPDATE:
I accepted the Pedro’s answer because it answered the question that I asked, but still I would like to know when and why (if any) the use of the Perl debugger as an interactive shell is a bad idea compared with one of the Perl REPL implementations. And which Perl REPL do you prefer?

Answer 1

One disadvantage of perl -d is that lexical variables immediately go out of scope. Example:

DB<1> my $p = 123;

DB<2> print $p;

DB<3>

From perldebug:

Note that the said eval is bound by an
implicit scope. As a result any newly
introduced lexical variable or any
modified capture buffer content is
lost after the eval. The debugger is a
nice environment to learn Perl, but if
you interactively experiment using
material which should be in the same
scope, stuff it in one linescope, stuff it in one line.