NAME

Getopt::Pad::Config::Format - config format base class and registry

DESCRIPTION

Abstract base class for config file formats and home of the format Registry. Subclass it, provide a NAMES constant and a parse($text) method returning a hashref, then call Getopt::Pad::Config::Format::registerFormat with your class. A format never touches files: Config I/O reads and writes them as UTF-8 and passes the decoded text in, so parse() receives and dump() returns Perl character strings, never octets. parse() should die on parse problems; the message is reported as a config error naming the file. An optional dump($data) method (hashref in, serialized text out) enables --create-default-config for the format. The full contract with a worked TOML example is documented under "EXTENDING" in Getopt::Pad.

Part of the Getopt::Pad distribution; see its documentation for the user-facing API.

AUTHOR

davenonymous <perl@davenonymous.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright 2026 davenonymous

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