Dominus, you have again created a GREAT module, and I will surely put it to use very often.

A string cannot be used to store data structures, unless serialized. It would however be great to use this efficient Tie::File together with array or hash references. Because putting the serialization in Tie::File would ruin all non-serializing operation, I thought it would be nice to tie an array and have automatic serialization. I have searched CPAN, but couldn't find a module that does what I want, so I created this quick hack:

package Tie::FreezeThaw;

# NOTE:
# This is a quick hack and has NOT been tested thoroughly!

# NOTE:
# You can't use the elements directly as references!
# (if @xyzzy is tied, $xyzzy[1][2] won't work.
# Use $foo = $xyzzy[1]; $foo->[2] instead.)

use FreezeThaw qw(freeze thaw);
use base 'Tie::Array';
use strict;

sub TIEARRAY  { bless $_[1], $_[0]  }
sub FETCHSIZE { scalar @{ $_[0] } }
sub STORESIZE { @{ $_[0] } = $_[1] }
sub EXISTS    { exists $_[0]->[$_[1]] }
sub DELETE    { delete $_[0]->[$_[1]] }

sub STORE {
    ($_[2] = freeze $_[2]) =~ s/([^\x20-\x7E])/sprintf "\xFF%02x", $1/
+ge;
    $_[0]->[$_[1]] = $_[2];
}

sub FETCH {
    (my $foo = $_[0]->[$_[1]]) =~ s/\xFF(..)/chr hex $1/ge;
    return (thaw $foo)[0];
}
1;
[download]

Which allows me to use Tie::File with complexer data structures (of course, entire records will be overwritten, but that's still more efficient than re-writing the entire file) without having to think about the serialization.

use Tie::File;
use Tie::FreezeThaw;
use strict;

tie my @foo, 'Tie::File', 'testfile' or die $!;
tie my @bar, 'Tie::FreezeThaw', \@foo;

push @bar, [ qw/1..10/ ];
[download]

(If there's already a module like my quick Tie::FreezeThaw hack, please let me know)

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W5kIHBhY2soKS4gQnV0IGRvIHlvdS
ByZWNvZ25pc2UgQmFzZTY0IHdoZW4
geW91IHNlZSBpdD8gIC0tIEp1ZXJk

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