xref: /openbsd/gnu/usr.bin/perl/dist/Storable/README (revision cecf84d4)
1                         Storable 2.14
2               Copyright (c) 1995-2000, Raphael Manfredi
3               Copyright (c) 2001-2004, Larry Wall
4
5------------------------------------------------------------------------
6    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
7    it under the same terms as Perl 5 itself.
8
9    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
10    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
11    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
12    Perl 5 License schemes for more details.
13------------------------------------------------------------------------
14
15+=======================================================================
16| Storable is distributed as a module, but is also part of the official
17| Perl core distribution, as of perl 5.8.
18| Maintenance is now done by the perl5-porters.  We thank Raphael
19| Manfredi for providing us with this very useful module.
20+=======================================================================
21
22The Storable extension brings persistence to your data.
23
24You may recursively store to disk any data structure, no matter how
25complex and circular it is, provided it contains only SCALAR, ARRAY,
26HASH (possibly tied) and references (possibly blessed) to those items.
27
28At a later stage, or in another program, you may retrieve data from
29the stored file and recreate the same hiearchy in memory. If you
30had blessed references, the retrieved references are blessed into
31the same package, so you must make sure you have access to the
32same perl class than the one used to create the relevant objects.
33
34There is also a dclone() routine which performs an optimized mirroring
35of any data structure, preserving its topology.
36
37Objects (blessed references) may also redefine the way storage and
38retrieval is performed, and/or what deep cloning should do on those
39objects.
40
41To compile this extension, run:
42
43    perl Makefile.PL [PERL_SRC=...where you put perl sources...]
44    make
45    make install
46
47There is an embedded POD manual page in Storable.pm.
48
49Storable was written by Raphael Manfredi <Raphael_Manfredi@pobox.com>
50Maintenance is now done by the perl5-porters <perl5-porters@perl.org>
51
52Please e-mail us with problems, bug fixes, comments and complaints,
53although if you have complements you should send them to Raphael.
54Please don't e-mail Raphael with problems, as he no longer works on
55Storable, and your message will be delayed while he forwards it to us.
56
57------------------------------------------------------------------------
58Thanks to (in chronological order):
59
60    Jarkko Hietaniemi <jhi@iki.fi>
61    Ulrich Pfeifer <pfeifer@charly.informatik.uni-dortmund.de>
62    Benjamin A. Holzman <bholzman@earthlink.net>
63    Andrew Ford <A.Ford@ford-mason.co.uk>
64    Gisle Aas <gisle@aas.no>
65    Jeff Gresham <gresham_jeffrey@jpmorgan.com>
66    Murray Nesbitt <murray@activestate.com>
67    Albert N. Micheev <Albert.N.Micheev@f80.n5049.z2.fidonet.org>
68    Marc Lehmann <pcg@opengroup.org>
69    Justin Banks <justinb@wamnet.com>
70    Jarkko Hietaniemi <jhi@iki.fi> (AGAIN, as perl 5.7.0 Pumpkin!)
71
72for their contributions.
73
74A Japanese translation of this man page is available at the Japanized
75Perl Resources Project <https://sourceforge.jp/projects/perldocjp/>.
76------------------------------------------------------------------------
77
78The perl5-porters would like to thank
79
80    Raphael Manfredi <Raphael_Manfredi@pobox.com>
81
82According to the perl5.8 Changes file, the following people have helped
83bring you this Storable release:
84
85    Abhijit Menon-Sen <ams@wiw.org>
86    Andreas J. Koenig <andreas.koenig@anima.de>
87    Archer Sully <archer@meer.net>
88    Craig A. Berry <craig.berry@psinetcs.com>
89    Dan Kogai <dankogai@dan.co.jp>
90    Doug MacEachern <dougm@covalent.net>
91    Gurusamy Sarathy <gsar@ActiveState.com>
92    H.Merijn Brand <h.m.brand@xs4all.nl>
93    Jarkko Hietaniemi <jhi@iki.fi>
94    Mark Bixby
95    Michael Stevens <michael@etla.org>
96    Mike Guy <mjtg@cam.ac.uk>
97    Nicholas Clark <nick@unfortu.net>
98    Peter J. Farley III <pjfarley@banet.net>
99    Peter Prymmer <pvhp@forte.com>
100    Philip Newton <pne@cpan.org>
101    Raphael Manfredi <Raphael_Manfredi@pobox.com>
102    Robin Barker <rmb1@cise.npl.co.uk>
103    Radu Greab <radu@netsoft.ro>
104    Tim Bunce <Tim.Bunce@pobox.com>
105    VMSperlers
106    Yitzchak Scott-Thoennes <sthoenna@efn.org>
107
108If I've missed you out, please accept my apologies, and e-mail your
109patch to perl5-porters@perl.org.
110