Tie::RefHash::Weak(3) User Contributed Perl DocumentationTie::RefHash::Weak(3)NAMETie::RefHash::Weak - A Tie::RefHash subclass with weakened references
in the keys.
SYNOPSIS
use Tie::RefHash::Weak;
tie my %h, 'Tie::RefHash::Weak';
# OR:
use Tie::RefHash::Weak 'fieldhash';
fieldhash my %h;
{ # new scope
my $val = "foo";
$h{\$val} = "bar"; # key is weak ref
print join(", ", keys %h); # contains \$val, returns regular reference
}
# $val goes out of scope, refcount goes to zero
# weak references to \$val are now undefined
keys %h; # no longer contains \$val
# see also Tie::RefHash
DESCRIPTION
The Tie::RefHash module can be used to access hashes by reference. This
is useful when you index by object, for example.
The problem with Tie::RefHash, and cross indexing, is that sometimes
the index should not contain strong references to the objecs.
Tie::RefHash's internal structures contain strong references to the
key, and provide no convenient means to make those references weak.
This subclass of Tie::RefHash has weak keys, instead of strong ones.
The values are left unaltered, and you'll have to make sure there are
no strong references there yourself.
FUNCTIONS
For compatibility with Hash::Util::FieldHash, this module will, upon
request, export the following two functions. You may also write "use
Tie::RefHash::Weak ':all'".
fieldhash %hash
This ties the hash and returns a reference to it.
fieldhashes \%hash1, \%hash2 ...
This ties each hash that is passed to it as a reference. It returns
the list of references in list context, or the number of hashes in
scalar context.
THREAD SAFETY
Tie::RefHash version 1.32 and above have correct handling of threads
(with respect to changing reference addresses). If your module requires
Tie::RefHash::Weak to be thread aware you need to depend on both
Tie::RefHash::Weak and Tie::RefHash version 1.32 (or later).
Version 0.02 and later of Tie::RefHash::Weak depend on a thread-safe
version of Tie::RefHash anyway, so if you are using the latest version
this should already be taken care of for you.
5.10.0 COMPATIBILITY
Due to a minor change in Perl 5.10.0 a bug in the handling of magic
freeing was uncovered causing segmentation faults.
This has been patched but not released yet, as of 0.08.
CAVEAT
You can use an LVALUE reference (such as "\substr ...") as a hash key,
but due to a bug in perl (see
<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=46943>) it might not
be possible to weaken a reference to it, in which case the hash element
will never be deleted automatically.
AUTHORS
Yuval Kogman <nothingmuch@woobling.org>
some maintenance by Hans Dieter Pearcey <hdp@pobox.com>
COPYRIGHT & LICENSE
Copyright (c) 2004 Yuval Kogman. All rights reserved
This program is free software; you can redistribute
it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
SEE ALSO
Tie::RefHash, Class::DBI (the live object cache),
"Perl_magic_killbackrefs" in mg.c
perl v5.14.1 2008-10-18 Tie::RefHash::Weak(3)
