Tie::MmapArray perl module Copyright (c) 1999, Ford & Mason Ltd This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of either: a) the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) any later version, or b) the "Artistic License" which comes with this kit. 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 either the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License for more details. You should have received a copy of the Artistic License with this kit, in the file named "Artistic". If not, you can get one from the Perl distribution. You should also have received a copy of the GNU General Public License, in the file named "Copying". If not, you can get one from the Perl distribution or else write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. DESCRIPTION The Tie::MmapArray module lets you use mmap to map in a file as a perl array rather than reading the file into dynamically allocated memory. It depends on your operating system supporting UNIX or POSIX.1b mmap, of course. (Code to use the equivalent Win32 functions has been contributed but is not yet tested.) INSTALLATION Prerequisites are perl 5.003 and an operating system that has an implementation of mmap(2) with either the traditional or the POSIX.1b API. Type perl Makefile.PL to write a personalised Makefile for your system. If your platform supports dynamic loading then just type make make test and provided you see "All tests successful" you can install it with make install If you need/want instead to make a statically linked perl which contains the module, then type make perl make test Documentation is included in pod format in MmapArray.pm itself. The "make install" step will install an Tie::MmapArray(3) man page or else you can use perldoc Tie::MmapArray which will find the documentation whether it has been installed or if you run it from the Tie::MmapArray distribution directory. Andrew Ford 27 Dec 1999