NAME

Data::Dump::Sexp - convert arbitrary scalars to s-expressions

SYNOPSIS

  use Data::Dump::Sexp;
  use Data::SExpression qw/cons/;
  say dump_sexp 5;                    # 5
  say dump_sexp "yes";                # "yes"
  say dump_sexp [1, "yes", 2];        # (1 "yes" 2)
  say dump_sexp { b => 5, a => "yes"} # (("a" . "yes") ("b" . 5))

DESCRIPTION

This module is not well-tested, proceed with caution.

Data::Dump::Sexp converts Perl structures to S-expressions.

The conversion rules are as follows:

1. A blessed object with a to_sexp method is replaced with the result of calling the method, and this procedure is restarted.

2. An instance of Data::SExpression::Symbol is converted to a symbol.

3. An instance of Data::SExpression::Cons is converted to a cons cell (like (A . B)), a proper list (like (A B C)) or an improper list (like (A B . C)), where A, B, C are S-expressions.

4. undef is converted to the empty list.

5. A defined scalar that looks like a number is left as-is.

6. A defined scalar that does not look like a number is surrounded by double quotes after any backslashes and double quote characters are escaped with a backslash.

7. An arrayref is converted to a proper list.

8. A hashref is converted to an alist, which is a proper list of cons cells (like ((A . B) (C . D) (E . F))).

9. A scalarref or a reference to another ref is dereferenced and this procedure is restarted.

10. Anything else (regexp, filehandle, format, glob, version string) causes an exception to be raised

A single function is exported by default:

dump_sexp $expr

Given any Perl scalar, convert it to a S-expression and return the sexp as a string.

AUTHOR

Marius Gavrilescu, <marius@ieval.ro>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2018 by Marius Gavrilescu

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.24.1 or, at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.