dwww Home | Manual pages | Find package

IO::ScalarArray(3pm)  User Contributed Perl Documentation  IO::ScalarArray(3pm)

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

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: ", $_;
           }

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.

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

       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.

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

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

   Input and output
       flush
           Instance method.  No-op, provided for OO compatibility.

       fileno
           Instance method.  No-op, returns undef

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

       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".

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

       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.

       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.

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

   Seeking/telling and other attributes
       autoflush
           Instance method.  No-op, provided for OO compatibility.

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

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

       eof Instance method.  Are we at end of file?

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

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

       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.

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

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

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

CONTRIBUTORS
       Dianne Skoll (dfs@roaringpenguin.com).

COPYRIGHT & LICENSE
       Copyright (c) 1997 Erik (Eryq) Dorfman, ZeeGee Software, Inc. All rights
       reserved.

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify  it
       under the same terms as Perl itself.

perl v5.38.2                       2024-07-31              IO::ScalarArray(3pm)

Generated by dwww version 1.16 on Tue Dec 16 05:51:52 CET 2025.