I am writing some command line scripts for my AMC jobs. I would like to use the debug utility from AMC::Basic.pm, but just print to STDOUT (or STDERR) rather than to a log file.

By tracing the source, it seems that set_debug($foo) checks first if $foo is the name of an existing file. If so, that file is opened and a package local variable $amc_debug_fh$ is set to write to that file. If $foo is not the name of an existing file, but still evaluates to true, a temporary file is created and $amc_debug_fh is set to write to it. There is a third possibility, which I don't quite get: if $foo equals '', the file handle STDERR is set to point to a local file handle AMC_STDERR_BACKUP (I think).

The debug() routine first checks for a flag $amc_debug and exits if it's not set. If the file handle $amc_debug_fh is set, debugging messages are print to that file handle. If not, debugging messages are print to STDOUT.

But I don't understand which public methods would result in setting $amc_debug to something true and $amc_debug_fh to something false. What am I missing?