Storable 1.015
               Copyright (c) 1995-2000, Raphael Manfredi
               Copyright (c) 2001,2002, Larry Wall

------------------------------------------------------------------------
    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the same terms as Perl 5 itself.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    Perl 5 License schemes for more details.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

+=======================================================================
| Storable is distributed as a module, but is also part of the official
| Perl core distribution, as of perl 5.8. 
| Maintenance is now done by the perl5-porters.  We thank Raphael
| Manfredi for providing us with this very useful module.
+=======================================================================

The Storable extension brings persistency to your data.

You may recursively store to disk any data structure, no matter how
complex and circular it is, provided it contains only SCALAR, ARRAY,
HASH (possibly tied) and references (possibly blessed) to those items.

At a later stage, or in another program, you may retrieve data from
the stored file and recreate the same hiearchy in memory. If you
had blessed references, the retrieved references are blessed into
the same package, so you must make sure you have access to the
same perl class than the one used to create the relevant objects.

There is also a dclone() routine which performs an optimized mirroring
of any data structure, preserving its topology.

Objects (blessed references) may also redefine the way storage and
retrieval is performed, and/or what deep cloning should do on those
objects.

To compile this extension, run:

    perl Makefile.PL [PERL_SRC=...where you put perl sources...]
    make
    make install

There is an embeded POD manual page in Storable.pm.

Storable was written by Raphael Manfredi <[email protected]>
Maitainance is now done by the perl5-porters <[email protected]>

Please e-mail us with problems, bug fixes, comments and complaints,
although if you have complements you should send them to Raphael.
Please don't e-mail Raphael with problems, as he no longer works on
Storable, and your message will be delayed while he forwards it to us.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks to (in chronological order):

    Jarkko Hietaniemi <[email protected]>
    Ulrich Pfeifer <[email protected]>
    Benjamin A. Holzman <[email protected]>
    Andrew Ford <[email protected]>
    Gisle Aas <[email protected]>
    Jeff Gresham <[email protected]>
    Murray Nesbitt <[email protected]>
    Albert N. Micheev <[email protected]>
    Marc Lehmann <[email protected]>
    Justin Banks <[email protected]>
    Jarkko Hietaniemi <[email protected]> (AGAIN, as perl 5.7.0 Pumpkin!)

for their contributions.

There is a Japanese translation of this man page available at
http://member.nifty.ne.jp/hippo2000/perltips/storable.htm,
courtesy of Kawai, Takanori <[email protected]>.
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The perl5-porters would like to thank

    Raphael Manfredi <[email protected]>

According to the perl5.8 Changes file, the following people have helped
bring you this Storable release:

    Abhijit Menon-Sen <[email protected]>
    Andreas J. Koenig <[email protected]>
    Archer Sully <[email protected]>
    Craig A. Berry <[email protected]>
    Dan Kogai <[email protected]>
    Doug MacEachern <[email protected]>
    Gurusamy Sarathy <[email protected]>
    H.Merijn Brand <[email protected]>
    Jarkko Hietaniemi <[email protected]>
    Mark Bixby
    Michael Stevens <[email protected]>
    Mike Guy <[email protected]>
    Nicholas Clark <[email protected]>
    Peter J. Farley III <[email protected]>
    Peter Prymmer <[email protected]>
    Philip Newton <[email protected]>
    Raphael Manfredi <[email protected]>
    Robin Barker <[email protected]>
    Radu Greab <[email protected]>
    Tim Bunce <[email protected]>
    VMSperlers
    Yitzchak Scott-Thoennes <[email protected]>

If I've missed you out, please accept my apologies, and e-mail your
patch to [email protected].