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¶

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.