NAME

Stone::Cursor - Traverse tags and values of a Stone

SYNOPSIS

use Boulder::Store;
$store = Boulder::Store->new('./soccer_teams');

my $stone = $store->get(28);
$cursor = $stone->cursor;
while (my ($key,$value) = $cursor->each) {
  print "$value: Go Bluejays!\n" if $key eq 'State' and $value eq 'Katonah';
}

DESCRIPTION

Boulder::Cursor is a utility class that allows you to create one or more iterators across a Stone object. This is used for traversing large Stone objects in order to identify or modify portions of the record.

CLASS METHODS

Boulder::Cursor->new($stone)

Return a new Boulder::Cursor over the specified Stone object. This will return an error if the object is not a Stone or a descendent. This method is usually not called directly, but rather indirectly via the Stone cursor() method:

my $cursor = $stone->cursor;

OBJECT METHODS

$cursor->each()

Iterate over the attached Stone. Each iteration will return a two-valued list consisting of a tag path and a value. The tag path is of a form that can be used with Stone::index() (in fact, a cursor is used internally to implement the Stone::dump() method. When the end of the Stone is reached, each() will return an empty list, after which it will start over again from the beginning. If you attempt to insert or delete from the stone while iterating over it, all attached cursors will reset to the beginnning.

For example:

	$cursor = $s->cursor;
	while (($key,$value) = $cursor->each) {
           print "$value: BOW WOW!\n" if $key=~/pet/;		
	}

$cursor->reset()

This resets the cursor back to the beginning of the associated Stone.

AUTHOR

Lincoln D. Stein <lstein@cshl.org>.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 1997-1999, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor NY. This module can be used and distributed on the same terms as Perl itself.

SEE ALSO

Boulder, Stone