NAME
Convert::Bencode - Functions for converting to/from bencoded strings
SYNOPSIS
use Convert::Bencode qw(bencode bdecode);
my $string = "d4:ainti12345e3:key5:value4:type4:teste";
my $hashref = bdecode($string);
foreach my $key (keys(%{$hashref})) {
print "Key: $key, Value: ${$hashref}{$key}\n";
}
my $encoded_string = bencode($hashref);
print $encoded_string."\n";
DESCRIPTION
This module provides two functions, "bencode" and "bdecode", which
encode and decode bencoded strings respectivly.
Encoding
"bencode()" expects to be passed a single value, which is either a
scalar, a arrary ref, or a hash ref, and it returns a scalar containing
the bencoded representation of the data structure it was passed. If the
value passed was a scalar, it returns either a bencoded string, or a
bencoded integer (floating points are not implemented, and would be
returned as a string rather than a integer). If the value was a array
ref, it returns a bencoded list, with all the values of that array also
bencoded recursivly. If the value was a hash ref, it returns a bencoded
dictionary (which for all intents and purposes can be thought of as a
synonym for hash) containing the recursivly bencoded key and value pairs
of the hash.
Decoding
"bdecode()" expects to be passed a single scalar containing the bencoded
string to be decoded. Its return value will be either a hash ref, a
array ref, or a scalar, depending on whether the outer most element of
the bencoded string was a dictionary, list, or a string/integer
respectivly.
SEE ALSO
The description of bencode is part of the bittorrent protocol
specification which can be found at
http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/protocol.html
BUGS
No error detection of bencoded data. Damaged input will most likely
cause very bad things to happen, up to and including causeing the
bdecode function to recurse infintly.
AUTHOR & COPYRIGHT
Created by R. Kyle Murphy <
[email protected]>, aka Orclev.
Copyright 2003 R. Kyle Murphy. All rights reserved. Convert::Bencode is
free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
terms as Perl itself.
