Sticking IO::Handle on top of a scalar.

dmitri has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Is there a way to create an IO::File or IO::Handle object that would use a string instead of an actual file?

Reason: I have a tar file in a scalar $string. I'd like to examine its contents using Archive::Tar. However, there are no APIs in Archive::Tar to use a scalar to initialize it, but it can take a filehandle.

Comment on Sticking IO::Handle on top of a scalar.

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Re: Sticking IO::Handle on top of a scalar. by broquaint (Abbot) on Jan 14, 2004 at 16:36 UTC
You could use `IO::Scalar`, or if your perl is 5.8+ then you could take advantage of the ability to `open` 'filehandles' to scalars e.g `my $str = ''; open my $fh, '>', \$str; print {$fh} 'this will end up in $str'; print "\$str contains: $str\n"; __output__ $str contains: this will end up in $str` [download] For more info see. `open` and `IO::Scalar`. HTH `_________ broquaint` update: reworded first sentence to make sense	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Sticking IO::Handle on top of a scalar. by borisz (Canon) on Jan 14, 2004 at 16:33 UTC
IO::String does exactly what you want. Boris	[reply]
Re: Sticking IO::Handle on top of a scalar. by ysth (Canon) on Jan 14, 2004 at 16:47 UTC
Pre-5.8.0, use IO::Scalar for this. Starting with 5.8.0, you can say just `open my $fh, "<", \$string`	[reply] [d/l]