# $File: //member/autrijus/Class-PseudoHash/README $ $Author: autrijus $ # $Revision: #1 $ $Change: 1 $ $DateTime: 2002/06/11 08:35:12 $ This is the README file for Class::PseudoHash, a module to emulate pseudo-hash behaviour via overload. * Installation Class::PseudoHash uses the standard perl module install process: perl Makefile.PL make make test make install * Copyright Copyright 2001, 2002 by Autrijus Tang , All rights reserved. You can redistribute and/or modify this bundle under the same terms as Perl itself. See . * Introduction Due to its impact on overall performance of ordinary hashes, pseudo-hashes are deprecated in perl v5.8, and will cease to exist in perl v5.10. By then, the 'fields' pragma is supposed to change to use a different implementation. Although 'perlref/Pseudo-hashes: Using an array as a hash' recommends against depending on the underlying implementation (i.e. using the first array element as hash indice), there are undoubtly many brave souls still writing such code, and fearing that the elimination of pseudo-hashes will require a massive rewrite of their programs. As one of the primary victims, I tried to devise a drop-in solution that could emulate exactly the same semantic of pseudo-hashes, thus keeping all my legacy code intact. So 'Class::PseudoHash' was born. Please refer to the POD text for synopsis and usage details.