File::CachingFind - Perl Module for multiple file search in paths ================================================================= TABLE OF CONTENTS ----------------- 1. Description 2. Availability 3. Prerequisites 4. Installation 5. Running Tests 6. Example 7. Known Bugs 8. Copyright 9. Author Information 1. DESCRIPTION -------------- File::CachingFind is a Perl module to cache filenames and directories for multiple file searches so that your script only has to browse the appropriate directories once. To achive this, it mainly uses a hash containing filenames and their corresponding directories. The Author used this module for a script analyzing a big tree of source modules. After introducing this modul, the process of locating the scattered include files was notably faster than before. (The include statements of the modules didn't contain directory informations.) See the provided user documentation for more details. As usual it is contained within the module source in POD format. 2. AVAILABILITY --------------- You can get the latest version of File::CachingFind from the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) at http://www.perl.org/CPAN/modules/by-module/File/ 3. PREREQUISITES ---------------- File::CachingFind requires Perl version 5.005 or later as well as the standard modules Cwd and DirHandle. It may also work with earlier "5er" versions of Perl, but this is untested yet. The latest versions of Perl can be obtained from CPAN: http://www.perl.org/CPAN/ 4. INSTALLATION --------------- To build, test and install this module, run the following commands: perl Makefile.PL make make test make install If you want to install the module under a special directory (instead of the default directory), try something like perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/usr/local/special/directory 5. RUNNING TESTS ---------------- If any of the tests fail, please contact the author with the output from the following command: make test TEST_VERBOSE=1 Some tests in t/locate_link.t will fail in any environment not supporting symbolic links, the test is not depending on the operating system yet. 6. EXAMPLE ---------- Consider having the followin files on your system: /usr/include/time.h /usr/include/sys/time.h /usr/include/bits/time.h /usr/local/include/net/time.h /usr/local/include/project/time.h Now you would initialize a File::CachingFind object with $includes = File::CachingFind->new(Path => ['/usr/include', '/usr/local/include']); Afterwords you can locate all time.h files with one call @time_h = $includes->findInPath('time.h'); giving you above list without any further directory access. If you have to look up many files that way, you'll notice the performance gain. You may customize the File::CachingFind object to be case insensitve, to cache only certain files, how to handle softlinks and in many other ways. See the user documentation for further details. 7. KNOWN BUGS ------------- Directory names ending with an exclamation mark can't be handled yet! Softlinks creating a cyclic directory structure will cause an infinite loop. If the same file is found more than once using different paths in the constructor (B), it will be cached more than once! At the moment this is considered a feature, not a bug. If you find a(nother) bug, please report it to the author along with the following information: * version of Perl * version of File::CachingFind * operating system type and version * exact text of error message or description of problem * the shortest possible program that exhibits the problem If I don't have access to a system similar to yours, I may ask you to insert some debugging lines and report back on the results. The more help and information you can provide, the better. 8. COPYRIGHT ------------ Copyright (c) 2002 Thomas Dorner. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. 9. AUTHOR INFORMATION --------------------- Thomas Dorner Thomas.Dorner@start.de or Thomas.Dorner@gmx.de