NAME

Tie::Hash::Array - a hash which is internally implemented as a sorted array

SYNOPSIS

  use Tie::Hash::Array;

  tie my %hash, 'Tie::Hash::Array';
  $hash{foo} = 'bar';

  my $object = new Foo;
  $hash{$object} = 'You can also use objects as keys.';

  while ( my($key, $value) = each %hash ) {
      $key->dwim($value) if ref $key && $key->can('dwim');
  }

DESCRIPTION

Hashes tied to this class will interally be stored as an array alternately containing keys and values, with its keys sorted in standard string comparison order, that is, as cmp does.

While the main purpose of this module is serving as a base class for Tie::Hash::Abbrev, some of its side effects may also be useful by themselves:

• "each" in perlfunc will return the contents in sorted order.

• You can use objects as keys. (Please note, however, that in this case the string representations of these objects should stay constant, or to be exact, their string sorting order should maintain stable, or else you might get undesired results.)

ADDITIONAL METHODS

split_at

  my %smaller = tied(%hash)->split_at('foo');

will delete all keys from %hash which are asciibetically smaller than "foo" (which needs not exist as a key itself) and return a list of the deleted keys and values.

SUBCLASSING

Please do not rely on the implementation details of this class for now, since they may still be subject to change.

If you'd like to subclass this module, please let me know; perhaps we can agree on some standards then.

AUTHOR

        Martin H. Sluka
        mailto:perl@sluka.de
        http://martin.sluka.de/

BUGS

None known so far.

SUPPORT

You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

    perldoc Tie::Hash::Array

You can also look for information at:

• RT: CPAN's request tracker

  http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=Tie-Hash-Array

• AnnoCPAN: Annotated CPAN documentation

  http://annocpan.org/dist/Tie-Hash-Array

• CPAN Ratings

  http://cpanratings.perl.org/d/Tie-Hash-Array

• Search CPAN

  http://search.cpan.org/dist/Tie-Hash-Array

COPYRIGHT & LICENCE

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

The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this module.

SEE ALSO

Tie::Hash::Abbrev