
=head1 NAME

Mail::Box::Tie - access an existing message-folder as an array or hash

=head1 SYNOPSIS

As an array:

 use Mail::Box::Tie;
 tie my(@inbox), Mail::Box::Tie::ARRAY => $folder;
 tie my(@inbox), Mail::Box::Tie => $folder;    # deprecated
 print $inbox[3];

or as hash:

 tie my(%inbox), Mail::Box::Tie::HASH => $folder;
 tie my(%inbox), Mail::Box::Tie => $folder;    # deprecated
 print $inbox{'<12379.124879@example.com>'};

=head1 DESCRIPTION

The use of Mail::Box::Tie is deprecated, because it is succeeded by two
separate modules: Mail::Box::Tie::ARRAY and Mail::Box::Tie::HASH.
However, this module still works.

Folders certainly look like an array of messages, so why not just
access them as one?  Or, the order is not important, but the
message-ids are (give relations): why not access them from a hash
based on this message-id?  Programs using one of these ties will
look simpler than programs using the more traditional method calls.

=head1 METHODS

=head1 SEE ALSO

A good start to read is Mail::Box-Overview.
More documentation and a mailinglist are available from the project's
website at L<http://perl.overmeer.net/mailbox/>.

=head1 AUTHOR

Written by Mark Overmeer (L<mark@overmeer.net|mailto:mark@overmeer.net>)
with the help of many.  See the ChangeLog for details.

=head1 VERSION

This code is beta, version 2.037.

Copyright (c) 2001-2003 by the authors. All rights reserved.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the same terms as Perl itself.
