NAME

IO::Lines - IO:: interface for reading/writing an array of lines

SYNOPSIS

use IO::Lines;
 
# See IO::ScalarArray for details 

DESCRIPTION

This class implements objects which behave just like FileHandle (or IO::Handle) objects, except that you may use them to write to (or read from) an array of lines. They can be tiehandle'd as well.

This is a subclass of IO::ScalarArray in which the underlying array has its data stored in a line-oriented-format: that is, every element ends in a "\n", with the possible exception of the final element. This makes getline() much more efficient; if you plan to do line-oriented reading/printing, you want this class.

The print() method will enforce this rule, so you can print arbitrary data to the line-array: it will break the data at newlines appropriately.

See IO::ScalarArray for full usage.

VERSION

$Id: Lines.pm,v 1.109 2000/05/03 12:14:49 eryq Exp $

AUTHORS

Principal author

Eryq (eryq@zeegee.com). President, ZeeGee Software Inc (http://www.zeegee.com).

Other contributors

Thanks to the following individuals for their invaluable contributions (if I've forgotten or misspelled your name, please email me!):

Morris M. Siegel, for his $/ patch and the new getlines().