It looks to me like you are trying to do some profiling of your code as it runs in a test environment. Take a look at the Devel modules, you may be able to find a profiler that does what you want.

If you want to inject code into subroutines for testing, you might find Hook::LexWrap useful.

Update: I'd find it a lot easier to read your posts if you added some formatting to your nodes. When you have long lists of things, us an ordered or unordered list. Keep you paragraphs short. Whitespace helps improve readability.

Take a look at Smart::Comments for debug support with macro-like abilities that disappears completely when disabled.

I'm afraid that I'm still not clear about what it is that you are trying to do. You mention checking whether or not a variable is defined. Well, Perl has an inbuilt function for this, called defined. A very simple example of its usage is as follows:

#!/usr/bin/perl -l
use strict;
use warnings;

my $foo = 1;
my $bar;

print '$foo is ', defined $foo ? "defined" : "not defined";
print '$bar is ', defined $bar ? "defined" : "not defined";
[download]

$foo is defined
$bar is not defined
[download]

You also mention that you want to track the value of a variable. The easiest way to do this is with print, or perhaps something like Data::Dumper.

If, as apl suggests, you are new to Perl and want to learn, then I would suggest that a good place to start would be the Tutorials section of the Monastery.

In any case, welcome to PerlMonks.

Darren :)