                         Storable 1.0
               Copyright (c) 1995-2000, Raphael Manfredi

------------------------------------------------------------------------
    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.  Maintenance is still done by the Author,
| whilst the perl5-porters ensure that no change to the Perl internals
| can break the version of Storable distributed with it.
+=======================================================================

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.

Raphael Manfredi <Raphael_Manfredi@pobox.com>

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

    Jarkko Hietaniemi <jhi@iki.fi>
    Ulrich Pfeifer <pfeifer@charly.informatik.uni-dortmund.de>
    Benjamin A. Holzman <bah@ecnvantage.com>
    Andrew Ford <A.Ford@ford-mason.co.uk>
    Gisle Aas <gisle@aas.no>
    Jeff Gresham <gresham_jeffrey@jpmorgan.com>
    Murray Nesbitt <murray@activestate.com>
    Albert N. Micheev <Albert.N.Micheev@f80.n5049.z2.fidonet.org>
    Marc Lehmann <pcg@opengroup.org>
	Justin Banks <justinb@wamnet.com>
	Jarkko Hietaniemi <jhi@iki.fi> (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 <kawai@nippon-rad.co.jp>.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
