Welcome to the Tie::Scalar::Easy README file. :)

Have you ever wanted to tie a scalar and just thought the it was just
'too difficult'? Or maybe you've wanted to change the way a part of the
scalar is accessed at runtime without re-tieing it? Well I have the
solution for you! No messy classes for us, we tie() in style.

The basic idea is to have you pass whatever functions you would like
overriden as key/value pairs in a hash-ref argument to a new() function.

The best way to explain it all is to show you the small demonstration that
is given in the Tie::Scalar::Easy man-page, which illustrates how
to create a scalar that returns a random number each time it is read from.

use Tie::Scalar::Easy;

srand(time ^ $$);        # needed before perl-5.004
new Tie::Scalar::Easy(\$random, {
    FETCH => sub { return int(rand(100) + .5) } });
print "$random, $random, $random, $random\n";

The above code is functionally equivelant to:

package RandomScalar;
require Tie::Scalar;
@ISA = qw(Tie::StdScalar);
sub FETCH { return int(rand(100) + .5) }
package main;
srand(time ^ $$);
tie($random, RandomScalar);
print "$random, $random, $random, $random\n";

There is obviously a slight code-size improvement, and the Easy version 
looks easier to understand. And, perhaps it's just me, but creating a
whole class just for a single function for a single variable seems like
overkill once Tie::Scalar::Easy has been created.

One of the fun things that you can easily do with Tie::Scalar::Easy is
override access functions at run-time.

tied($random)->{'STORE'} => sub { srand($_[1]) };

It has a million other uses, but I'll leave it to the imagination of the
reader, as I don't intend to get a RSI just for one silly Perl module.

If my sales pitch was successful, just download the most recent
EasyScalar-x.xx.tar.gz file from your local CPAN mirror, extract it,
follow the instructions in INSTALL, && have lots of fun || die.

If you find a bug or other error, I can be reached at jql@accessone.com.
Hell, if you just have a creative use for my module, e-mail me. I don't
get nearly enough e-mail. I won't mind.

<LEGALESE>

Copyright (C) 1997 Ashley Winters <jql@accessone.com>. All rights reserved.

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

</LEGALESE>