NAME

Net::Dict - Dict Client class

SYNOPSIS

	use Net::Dict;
    
	$dict = Net::Dict->new("some.host.name");
	$h = $dict->define("word");
	foreach $i (@{$h}) {
		($dict, $def) = @{$i};
		. . .
	}

DESCRIPTION

Net::Dict is a class implementing a simple Dict client in Perl as described in RFC2229. It provides wrappers for a subset of the RFC2229 commands.

OVERVIEW

Quotation from RFC2229:

The Dictionary Server Protocol (DICT) is a TCP transaction based
query/response protocol that allows a client to access dictionary
definitions from a set of natural language dictionary databases.

CONSTRUCTOR

new (HOST [,OPTIONS])

This is the constructor for a new Net::Dict object. HOST is the name of the remote host on which a Dict server is running.

If the HOST value is an empty string, the default behavior is to try dict.org, alt0.dict.org, alt1.dict.org, and alt2.dict.org, in that order.

OPTIONS are passed in a hash like fashion, using key and value pairs. Possible options are:

ConfigFile - The path to the configuration file (see dict(1) for details on the format of the config. file). The config file entries override the default definitions (e.g. server name and port), but are overriden by an explicit definitions in the constructor.

HTML - Give an output of 'match' and 'define' in HTML.

Port - The port number to connect to on the remote machine for the Dict connection (a default port number is 2628, according to RFC2229).

Timeout - Set a timeout value (defaults to 120)

Debug - debug level (see the debug method in Net::Cmd)

METHODS

Unless otherwise stated all methods return either a true or false value, with true meaning that the operation was a success. When a method states that it returns a value, failure will be returned as undef or an empty list.

auth (USER, SECRET) - perform an authentication protocol.

serverInfo - returns a string, containing the information about the server.

dbs - returns hash, containing an ID of the dictionary as a key and description as the value.

dbInfo($dbname) - returns a string, containing description of the dictionary $dbname.

setDicts (@dicts) - sets the set of dictionaries, that will be searched during the successive define() calls. Defaults to '*'. No existance checks are performed by this interface, so you'd better make sure the dictionaries you specify are on the server (e.g. by calling dbs()).

strats returns an array, containing an ID of a matching strategy as a key and a verbose description as a value.

define($word [, @dbs]) - returns a reference to an array, whose members are lists, consisting of two elements: the dictionary name and the definition. If no dictionaries are specified, those set by setDicts() are used.

match($word, $strategy [, @dbs]) - same as define(), but a matching using the specified strategies is performed. Return array of lists, consisting of dictionary - match pairs.

UNIMPLEMENTED

The following RFC2229 commands have not been implemented:

REPORTING BUGS

When reporting bugs/problems please include as much information as possible. It may be difficult for me to reproduce the problem as almost every setup is different.

A small script which yields the problem will probably be of help. It would also be useful if this script was run with the extra options Debug = 1> passed to the constructor, and the output sent with the bug report. If you cannot include a small script then please include a Debug trace from a run of your program which does yield the problem.

AUTHOR

Dmitry Rubinstein <dimrub@wisdom.weizmann.ac.il> Net::FTP and Net::SMTP modules were used as a pattern and a model for imitation.

SEE ALSO

Net::Netrc Net::Cmd

dict(1), dictd(8), RFC 2229 http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/htbin/rfc/rfc2229.html http://www.dict.org/

CREDITS

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 1998 Dmitry Rubinstein. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.