NAME

Tie::Dir - class definition for reading directories via a tied hash

SYNOPSIS

        use Tie::Dir qw(DIR_UNLINK);
        
        # Both of these produce identical results
        #(ie %hash is tied)
        tie %hash, Tie::Dir, ".", DIR_UNLINK;
        new Tie::Dir \%hash, ".", DIR_UNLINK;
        
        # This creates a reference to a hash, which is tied.
        $hash = new Tie::Dir ".";
        
        # All these examples assume that %hash is tied (ie one of the
        # first two tie methods was used
        
        # itterate through the directory
        foreach $file ( keys %hash ) {
                ...
        }
        
        # Set the access and modification times (touch :-)
        $hash{SomeFile} = time;
        
        # Obtain stat information of a file
        @stat = @{$hash{SomeFile}};
        
        # Check if entry exists
        if(exists $hash{SomeFile}) {
                ...
        }
        
        # Delete an entry, only if DIR_UNLINK specified
        delete $hash{SomeFile};

DESCRIPTION

This module provides a method of reading directories using a hash.

The keys of the hash are the directory entries and the values are a reference to an array which holds the result of stat being called on the entry.

The access and modification times of an entry can be changed by assigning to an element of the hash. If a single number is assigned then the access and modification times will both be set to the same value, alternatively the access and modification times may be set separetly by passing a reference to an array with 2 entries, the first being the access time and the second being the modification time.

new [hashref,] dirname [, options]

This method ties the hash referenced by hashref to the directory dirname. If hashref is omitted then new returns a reference to a hash which hash been tied, otherwise it returns the result of tie

The possible options are:

DIR_UNLINK

Delete operations on the hash will cause unlink to be called on the corresponding file

AUTHOR

Graham Barr <bodg@tiuk.ti.com>, from a quick hack posted by Kenneth Albanowski <kjahds@kjahds.com> to the perl5-porters mailing list based on a neat idea by Ilya Zakharevich.