NAME

Tie::Autotie - Automatically ties underlying references

SYNOPSIS

use Tie::Autotie
  'Tie::Module',      # the module to autotie
  [ 'use', 'args' ],  # arguments to 'use Tie::Module'
  [ 'tie', 'args' ];  # arguments to tie() for Tie::Module

# then use Tie::Module as usual

DESCRIPTION

This module allows you to automatically tie data structures contained in a tied data structure. As an example:

use Tie::Autotie 'Tie::IxHash';

tie my(%hash), 'Tie::IxHash';

$hash{jeff}{age} = 22;
$hash{jeff}{lang} = 'Perl';
$hash{jeff}{brothers} = 3;
$hash{jeff}{sisters} = 4;

$hash{kristin}{age} = 22;
$hash{kristin}{lang} = 'Latin';
$hash{kristin}{brothers} = 1;
$hash{kristin}{sisters} = 0;

for my $who (keys %hash) {
  print "$who:\n";
  for my $what (keys %{ $hash{$who} }) {
    print "  $what = $hash{$who}{$what}\n";
  }
}

This program outputs:

jeff:
  age = 22
  lang = Perl
  brothers = 3
  sisters = 4
kristin:
  age = 22
  lang = Latin
  brothers = 1
  sisters = 0

You can see that the keys of %hash are returned in the order in which they were created, as well as the keys of the sub-hashes.

BUGS

• A non-autotied layer

  It only works if each layer is being autotied. As soon as there's a layer that is not being autotied, all layers inside it will also be ignored:

  use Tie::Autotie 'Tie::IxHash';
  
  tie my(%hash), 'Tie::IxHash';
  
  $hash{a}{b} = 1;  # %{ $hash{a} } is autotied
  $hash{a}{c} = 2;  # so keys %{ $hash{a} } returns ('b', 'c')
  
  $hash{d}[0]{a}{y} = 3;  # %{ $hash{d} } is autotied, but Tie::IxHash has
  $hash{d}[0]{a}{x} = 4;  # no control over $hash{d}[0], so $hash{d}[0]{a}
                          # is not autotied

  At the moment, there's no way to get around this. Please stick to using data structures that your tying module can handle.

• Assigning a reference

  In the Tie::IxHash example, you cannot do:

  $hash{jeff} = {
    age => 22,
    lang => 'Perl',
    brothers => 3,
    sisters => 4,
  };

  because that creates a hash reference, not an object of Tie::IxHash. This hash reference ends up being destroyed anyway, and replaced with a Tie::IxHash object that points to an empty hash.

AUTHOR

Jeff japhy Pinyan, <japhy@pobox.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2004 by japhy

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.3 or, at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.