IO::Zlib

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
CONSTRUCTOR
METHODS
SEE ALSO
HISTORY
COPYRIGHT

NAME

IO::Zlib - IO:: style interface to the Compress::Zlib manpage

SYNOPSIS

With any version of Perl 5 you can use the basic OO interface:

    use IO::Zlib;

    $fh = new IO::Zlib;
    if ($fh->open("file.gz", "rb")) {
        print <$fh>;
        $fh->close;
    }

    $fh = IO::Zlib->new("file.gz", "wb9");
    if (defined $fh) {
        print $fh "bar\n";
        $fh->close;
    }

    $fh = IO::Zlib->new("file.gz", "rb");
    if (defined $fh) {
        print <$fh>;
        undef $fh;       # automatically closes the file
    }

With Perl 5.004 you can also use the TIEHANDLE interface to access compressed files just like ordinary files:

    use IO::Zlib;

    tie *FILE, 'IO::Zlib', "file.gz", "wb";
    print FILE "line 1\nline2\n";

    tie *FILE, 'IO::Zlib', "file.gz", "rb";
    while (<FILE>) { print "LINE: ", $_ };

DESCRIPTION

IO::Zlib provides an IO:: style interface to the Compress::Zlib manpage and hence to gzip/zlib compressed files. It provides many of the same methods as the the IO::Handle manpage interface.

CONSTRUCTOR

new ( [ARGS] ): Creates an IO::Zlib object. If it receives any parameters, they are passed to the method open; if the open fails, the object is destroyed. Otherwise, it is returned to the caller.

METHODS

open ( FILENAME, MODE ): open takes two arguments. The first is the name of the file to open and the second is the open mode. The mode can be anything acceptable to the Compress::Zlib manpage and by extension anything acceptable to zlib (that basically means POSIX fopen() style mode strings plus an optional number to indicate the compression level).
opened: Returns true if the object currently refers to a opened file.
close: Close the file associated with the object and disassociate the file from the handle. Done automatically on destroy.
getc: Return the next character from the file, or undef if none remain.
getline: Return the next line from the file, or undef on end of string. Can safely be called in an array context. Currently ignores $/ ($INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR or $RS when the English manpage is in use) and treats lines as delimited by ``\n''.
getlines: Get all remaining lines from the file. It will croak() if accidentally called in a scalar context.
print ( ARGS... ): Print ARGS to the file.
read ( BUF, NBYTES, [OFFSET] ): Read some bytes from the file. Returns the number of bytes actually read, 0 on end-of-file, undef on error.
eof: Returns true if the handle is currently positioned at end of file?
seek ( OFFSET, WHENCE ): Seek to a given position in the stream. Not yet supported.
tell: Return the current position in the stream, as a numeric offset. Not yet supported.
setpos ( POS ): Set the current position, using the opaque value returned by getpos(). Not yet supported.
getpos ( POS ): Return the current position in the string, as an opaque object. Not yet supported.

HISTORY

Created by Tom Hughes <tom@compton.nu>.