NAME

IO::Scalar - IO:: interface for reading/writing a scalar

SYNOPSIS

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

    use 5.005;
    use IO::Scalar;
    $data = "My message:\n";

    ### Open a handle on a string, and append to it:
    $SH = new IO::Scalar \$data;
    $SH->print("Hello");
    $SH->print(", world!\nBye now!\n");
    print "The string is now: ", $data, "\n";

    ### Open a handle on a string, read it line-by-line, then close it:
    $SH = new IO::Scalar \$data;
    while (defined($_ = $SH->getline)) {
        print "Got line: $_";
    }
    $SH->close;

    ### Open a handle on a string, and slurp in all the lines:
    $SH = new IO::Scalar \$data;
    print "All lines:\n", $SH->getlines;

    ### Get the current position (either of two ways):
    $pos = $SH->getpos;
    $offset = $SH->tell;

    ### Set the current position (either of two ways):
    $SH->setpos($pos);
    $SH->seek($offset, 0);

    ### Open an anonymous temporary scalar:
    $SH = new IO::Scalar;
    $SH->print("Hi there!");
    print "I printed: ", ${$SH->sref}, "\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 5.005;
    use IO::Scalar;
    $data = "My message:\n";

    ### Open a handle on a string, and append to it:
    $SH = new IO::Scalar \$data;
    print $SH "Hello";
    print $SH ", world!\nBye now!\n";
    print "The string is now: ", $data, "\n";

    ### Open a handle on a string, read it line-by-line, then close it:
    $SH = new IO::Scalar \$data;
    while (<$SH>) {
        print "Got line: $_";
    }
    close $SH;

    ### Open a handle on a string, and slurp in all the lines:
    $SH = new IO::Scalar \$data;
    print "All lines:\n", <$SH>;

    ### Get the current position (WARNING: requires 5.6):
    $offset = tell $SH;

    ### Set the current position (WARNING: requires 5.6):
    seek $SH, $offset, 0;

    ### Open an anonymous temporary scalar:
    $SH = new IO::Scalar;
    print $SH "Hi there!";
    print "I printed: ", ${$SH->sref}, "\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::Scalar;

    ### Writing to a scalar...
    my $s;
    tie *OUT, 'IO::Scalar', \$s;
    print OUT "line 1\nline 2\n", "line 3\n";
    print "String is now: $s\n"

    ### Reading and writing an anonymous scalar...
    tie *OUT, 'IO::Scalar';
    print OUT "line 1\nline 2\n", "line 3\n";
    tied(OUT)->seek(0,0);
    while (<OUT>) {
        print "Got line: ", $_;
    }

Stringification works, too!

    my $SH = new IO::Scalar \$data;
    print $SH "Hello, ";
    print $SH "world!";
    print "I printed: $SH\n";

DESCRIPTION

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

The IO::Scalar class implements objects which behave just like IO::Handle (or FileHandle) objects, except that you may use them to write to (or read from) scalars. These handles are automatically tiehandle'd (though please see "WARNINGS" for information relevant to your Perl version).

Basically, this:

    my $s;
    $SH = new IO::Scalar \$s;
    $SH->print("Hel", "lo, ");         ### OO style
    $SH->print("world!\n");            ### ditto

Or this:

    my $s;
    $SH = tie *OUT, 'IO::Scalar', \$s;
    print OUT "Hel", "lo, ";           ### non-OO style
    print OUT "world!\n";              ### ditto

Causes $s to be set to:

    "Hello, world!\n"

PUBLIC INTERFACE

Construction

new [ARGS...]

Class method. Return a new, unattached scalar handle. If any arguments are given, they're sent to open().

open [SCALARREF]

Instance method. Open the scalar handle on a new scalar, pointed to by SCALARREF. If no SCALARREF is given, a "private" scalar is created to hold the file data.

Returns the self object on success, undefined on error.

opened

Instance method. Is the scalar handle opened on something?

close

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

Input and output

flush

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

getc

Instance method. Return the next character, or undef if none remain.

getline

Instance method. Return the next line, or undef on end of string. 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 scalar.

Warning: this continues to always cause a seek to the end of the string, but if you perform seek()s and tell()s, it is still safer to explicitly seek-to-end before subsequent print()s.

read BUF, NBYTES, [OFFSET]

Instance method. Read some bytes from the scalar. Returns the number of bytes actually read, 0 on end-of-file, undef on error.

write BUF, NBYTES, [OFFSET]

Instance method. Write some bytes to the scalar.

sysread BUF, LEN, [OFFSET]

Instance method. Read some bytes from the scalar. Returns the number of bytes actually read, 0 on end-of-file, undef on error.

syswrite BUF, NBYTES, [OFFSET]

Instance method. Write some bytes to the scalar.

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 OFFSET, WHENCE: Instance method. Seek to a given position in the stream.
sysseek OFFSET, WHENCE: Instance method. Identical to seek OFFSET, WHENCE, q.v.
tell: Instance method. Return the current position in the stream, as a numeric offset.
setpos POS: Instance method. Set the current position, using the opaque value returned by getpos().
getpos: Instance method. Return the current position in the string, as an opaque object.
sref: Instance method. Return a reference to the underlying scalar.

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::Scalar will not work prior to 5.005_57. IO::Scalar 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::Scalar with an old Perl. The remedy is to simply use the OO version; e.g.:

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

VERSION

$Id: Scalar.pm,v 1.6 2005/02/10 21:21:53 dfs Exp $

AUTHORS

Primary Maintainer

David F. Skoll (dfs@roaringpenguin.com).

Principal author

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

Other contributors

The full set of contributors always includes the folks mentioned in "CHANGE LOG" in IO::Stringy. But just the same, special thanks to the following individuals for their invaluable contributions (if I've forgotten or misspelled your name, please email me!):

Andy Glew, for contributing getc().

Brandon Browning, for suggesting opened().

David Richter, for finding and fixing the bug in PRINTF().

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

Richard Jones, for his patches to massively improve the performance of getline() and add sysread and syswrite.

B. K. Oxley (binkley), for stringification and inheritance improvements, and sundry good ideas.

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