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bgcolor="#FFFFFF" link="#CC3366" vlink="#993366" alink="#FF6666"> ZeeGee Software

IO::ScalarArray 2.103

This module is BETA code, which means that the interfaces are fairly stable BUT it has not been out in the community long enough to guarantee much testing. Use with caution! Please report any errors back to eryq@zeegee.com as soon as you can.


Top NAME

IO::ScalarArray - IO:: interface for reading/writing an array of scalars


Top SYNOPSIS

Perform I/O on strings, using the basic OO interface...

    use IO::ScalarArray;
    @data = ("My mes", "sage:\n");
    ### Open a handle on an array, and append to it:
    $AH = new IO::ScalarArray \@data;
    $AH->print("Hello");       
    $AH->print(", world!\nBye now!\n");  
    print "The array is now: ", @data, "\n";
    ### Open a handle on an array, read it line-by-line, then close it:
    $AH = new IO::ScalarArray \@data;
    while (defined($_ = $AH->getline)) { 
	print "Got line: $_";
    }
    $AH->close;
    ### Open a handle on an array, and slurp in all the lines:
    $AH = new IO::ScalarArray \@data;
    print "All lines:\n", $AH->getlines; 
    ### Get the current position (either of two ways):
    $pos = $AH->getpos;         
    $offset = $AH->tell;  
    ### Set the current position (either of two ways):
    $AH->setpos($pos);        
    $AH->seek($offset, 0);
    ### Open an anonymous temporary array:
    $AH = new IO::ScalarArray;
    $AH->print("Hi there!");
    print "I printed: ", @{$AH->aref}, "\n";      ### get at value

Don't like OO for your I/O? No problem. Thanks to the magic of an invisible tie(), the following now works out of the box, just as it does with IO::Handle: use IO::ScalarArray; @data = ("My mes", "sage:\n");

    ### Open a handle on an array, and append to it:
    $AH = new IO::ScalarArray \@data;
    print $AH "Hello";    
    print $AH ", world!\nBye now!\n";
    print "The array is now: ", @data, "\n";
    ### Open a handle on a string, read it line-by-line, then close it:
    $AH = new IO::ScalarArray \@data;
    while (<$AH>) {
	print "Got line: $_";
    }
    close $AH;
    ### Open a handle on a string, and slurp in all the lines:
    $AH = new IO::ScalarArray \@data;
    print "All lines:\n", <$AH>;
    ### Get the current position (WARNING: requires 5.6):
    $offset = tell $AH;
    ### Set the current position (WARNING: requires 5.6):
    seek $AH, $offset, 0;
    ### Open an anonymous temporary scalar:
    $AH = new IO::ScalarArray;
    print $AH "Hi there!";
    print "I printed: ", @{$AH->aref}, "\n";      ### get at value

And for you folks with 1.x code out there: the old tie() style still works, though this is unnecessary and deprecated:

    use IO::ScalarArray;
    ### Writing to a scalar...
    my @a; 
    tie *OUT, 'IO::ScalarArray', \@a;
    print OUT "line 1\nline 2\n", "line 3\n";
    print "Array is now: ", @a, "\n"
    ### Reading and writing an anonymous scalar... 
    tie *OUT, 'IO::ScalarArray';
    print OUT "line 1\nline 2\n", "line 3\n";
    tied(OUT)->seek(0,0);
    while (<OUT>) { 
        print "Got line: ", $_;
    }


Top DESCRIPTION

This class is part of the IO::Stringy distribution; see IO::Stringy for change log and general information.

The IO::ScalarArray class implements objects which behave just like IO::Handle (or FileHandle) objects, except that you may use them to write to (or read from) arrays of scalars. Logically, an array of scalars defines an in-core "file" whose contents are the concatenation of the scalars in the array. The handles created by this class are automatically tiehandle'd (though please see WARNINGS for information relevant to your Perl version).

For writing large amounts of data with individual print() statements, this class is likely to be more efficient than IO::Scalar.

Basically, this:

    my @a;
    $AH = new IO::ScalarArray \@a;
    $AH->print("Hel", "lo, ");         ### OO style
    $AH->print("world!\n");            ### ditto

Or this:

    my @a;
    $AH = new IO::ScalarArray \@a;
    print $AH "Hel", "lo, ";           ### non-OO style
    print $AH "world!\n";              ### ditto

Causes @a to be set to the following array of 3 strings:

    ( "Hel" , 
      "lo, " , 
      "world!\n" )

See IO::Scalar and compare with this class.


Top PUBLIC INTERFACE


Top Construction

Top new [ARGS...]
Class method. Return a new, unattached array handle. If any arguments are given, they're sent to open().

Top open [ARRAYREF]
Instance method. Open the array handle on a new array, pointed to by ARRAYREF. If no ARRAYREF is given, a "private" array is created to hold the file data.

Returns the self object on success, undefined on error.

Top opened
Instance method. Is the array handle opened on something?

Top close
Instance method. Disassociate the array handle from its underlying array. Done automatically on destroy.


Top Input and output

Top flush
Instance method. No-op, provided for OO compatibility.

Top getc
Instance method. Return the next character, or undef if none remain. This does a read(1), which is somewhat costly.

Top getline
Instance method. Return the next line, or undef on end of data. Can safely be called in an array context. Currently, lines are delimited by "\n".

Top getlines
Instance method. Get all remaining lines. It will croak() if accidentally called in a scalar context.

Top print ARGS...
Instance method. Print ARGS to the underlying array.

Currently, this always causes a "seek to the end of the array" and generates a new array entry. This may change in the future.

Top read BUF, NBYTES, [OFFSET];
Instance method. Read some bytes from the array. Returns the number of bytes actually read, 0 on end-of-file, undef on error.

Top write BUF, NBYTES, [OFFSET];
Instance method. Write some bytes into the array.


Top Seeking/telling and other attributes

Top autoflush
Instance method. No-op, provided for OO compatibility.

Top binmode
Instance method. No-op, provided for OO compatibility.

Top clearerr
Instance method. Clear the error and EOF flags. A no-op.

Top eof
Instance method. Are we at end of file?

Top seek POS,WHENCE
Instance method. Seek to a given position in the stream. Only a WHENCE of 0 (SEEK_SET) is supported.

Top tell
Instance method. Return the current position in the stream, as a numeric offset.

Top setpos POS
Instance method. Seek to a given position in the array, using the opaque getpos() value. Don't expect this to be a number.

Top getpos
Instance method. Return the current position in the array, as an opaque value. Don't expect this to be a number.

Top aref
Instance method. Return a reference to the underlying array.


Top WARNINGS

Perl's TIEHANDLE spec was incomplete prior to 5.005_57; it was missing support for seek(), tell(), and eof(). Attempting to use these functions with an IO::ScalarArray will not work prior to 5.005_57. IO::ScalarArray will not have the relevant methods invoked; and even worse, this kind of bug can lie dormant for a while. If you turn warnings on (via $^W or perl -w), and you see something like this...

    attempt to seek on unopened filehandle

...then you are probably trying to use one of these functions on an IO::ScalarArray with an old Perl. The remedy is to simply use the OO version; e.g.:

    $AH->seek(0,0);    ### GOOD: will work on any 5.005
    seek($AH,0,0);     ### WARNING: will only work on 5.005_57 and beyond


Top VERSION

$Id: ScalarArray.pm,v 2.103 2001/08/09 08:04:44 eryq Exp $


Top AUTHOR


Top Principal author

Eryq (eryq@zeegee.com). President, ZeeGee Software Inc (http://www.zeegee.com).


Top Other contributors

Thanks to the following individuals for their invaluable contributions (if I've forgotten or misspelled your name, please email me!):

Andy Glew, for suggesting getc().

Brandon Browning, for suggesting opened().

Eric L. Brine, for his offset-using read() and write() implementations.

Doug Wilson, for the IO::Handle inheritance and automatic tie-ing.


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