
 NAME
 NAMEIO::ScalarArray - IO:: interface for reading/writing an array of scalars
 SYNOPSIS
 SYNOPSISPerform 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
 DESCRIPTIONThis 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
 PUBLIC INTERFACE Construction
 Construction new [ARGS...]
 new [ARGS...] open [ARRAYREF]
 open [ARRAYREF]Returns the self object on success, undefined on error.
 opened
 opened close
 close Input and output
 Input and output flush
 flush getc
 getc getline
 getline getlines
 getlines print ARGS...
 print ARGS...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];
 read BUF, NBYTES, [OFFSET]; write BUF, NBYTES, [OFFSET];
 write BUF, NBYTES, [OFFSET]; Seeking/telling and other attributes
 Seeking/telling and other attributes autoflush
 autoflush binmode
 binmode clearerr
 clearerr eof
 eof seek POS,WHENCE
 seek POS,WHENCE tell
 tell setpos POS
 setpos POS getpos
 getpos aref
 aref WARNINGS
 WARNINGSPerl'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::ScalarArray will not work
prior to 5.005_57. IO::ScalarArray 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::ScalarArray with an old Perl.  The remedy is to simply
use the OO version; e.g.:
    $AH->seek(0,0);    ### GOOD: will work on any 5.005
    seek($AH,0,0);     ### WARNING: will only work on 5.005_57 and beyond
 VERSION
 VERSION$Id: ScalarArray.pm,v 2.103 2001/08/09 08:04:44 eryq Exp $
 AUTHOR
 AUTHOR Principal author
 Principal authorEryq (
 Other contributors
 Other contributorsThanks to the following individuals for their invaluable contributions (if I've forgotten or misspelled your name, please email me!):
Andy Glew,
for suggesting getc().
Brandon Browning,
for suggesting opened().
Eric L. Brine, for his offset-using read() and write() implementations.
Doug Wilson, for the IO::Handle inheritance and automatic tie-ing.