View the data in a piddle a la Data::Dumper

Sometimes you want to just view the data in piddle, but you don't have PDL::IO::Browser installed. What to do? From Craig DeForest comes this gem. It only looks like a piece of barbed wire, but it is even sharper.

    sub bigstring {
        my($pdl, $fmt, $lev) = @_;
        
        $fmt = "%g" unless($fmt);
        my $s=" "x$lev;
        
        if($pdl->ndims > 1) {
               $s .= join("\n", "[", (map { bigstring($_,$fmt,$lev+1) } dog $pdl), $s."]");
        }
        elsif ($pdl->ndims) {
               $s .= "[ " . join(" ",map { sprintf($fmt,$_) } $pdl->list) . " ]";
        }
        else {
               $s = sprintf($fmt,$pdl->at(0));
        }
        
        return $s;
    }
    
    print bigstring($bighonkingpdl,"%5g");