This is the README file for Class::PseudoHash, a module to emulate pseudo-hash behaviour via overload. * Installation Class::PseudoHash uses the standard perl module install process: perl Makefile.PL make make install * Copyright Copyright 2001 by Autrijus Tang , All rights reserved. You can redistribute and/or modify this bundle under the same terms as Perl itself. See . * Introduction Due to its impact on overall performance of ordinary hashes, pseudo-hashes are deprecated in perl v5.8, and will cease to exist in perl v5.10. The "fields" pragma will change to use a different implementation. Although the Pseudo-hashes: Using an array as a hash entry in the perlref manpage recommends against using the first-element-as-index behaviour, it's doubtless that many brave souls still wrote codes that utilized it, and fears that the elimination of pseudo-hashes will require a massive rewrite of their code. As one of the primary victims, I tried to find a drop-in solution that could emulate exactly the same semantic of pseudo-hashes, thus keeping all my legacy code intact. So "Class::PseudoHash" is born. Please refer to the manpage for synopsis and details on usage.