Visualizing Perl data structures

Joseph Hall invented Perl Graphical Structures, which he used in Effective Perl Programming and we used in Intermediate Perl. To make the images for the first and second editions, I wrote PeGS::PDF (on Github).

I used this to create all of the PeGS structures in the book. Here are a couple of examples, which you can also find in the distribution. I can make the basic structures from Learning Perl as well as the references and structures from this book. I can’t make arbitrarily deep structures because I didn’t do the work to recursively place everything in non-overlapping spaces.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

use PeGS::PDF;

my $W    = 1.50 * 72;
my $H    = 2.25 * 72;

my $pdf = PeGS::PDF->new(
	{
	file => "/Users/brian/Desktop/array.pdf",
	'x'  => $W,
	'y'  => $H,
	}
	);
die "Could not create object!" unless ref $pdf;

$pdf->make_array( '@cats', [ qw(Buster Mimi Ginger Ella) ], 10, 120 );

$pdf->close;

I can also make a hash.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

use PeGS::PDF;

my $W    = 2.5 * 72;
my $H    = 2.25  * 72;

my $pdf = PeGS::PDF->new(
        {
        file => "/Users/brian/Desktop/hash.pdf",
        'x'  => $W,
        'y'  => $H,
        }
        );
die "Could not create object!" unless ref $pdf;

my %microchips = qw(
        Buster  1435
        Mimi    9874
        Ella    3004
        Ginger  5207
        );

$pdf->make_hash( '%microchips', \%microchips, 10, 120 );

$pdf->close;