/ 
Text-ETSV-0.01
/ Text::ETSV

NAME

Text::ETSV - Manipulate ETSV (Enhanced Tab Separated Values).

SYNOPSIS

use Text::ETSV;

my %param = (
   name    => 'Masanori HATA'           ,
   mail    => 'lovewing@dream.big.or.jp',
   sex     => 'male'                    ,
   birth   => '2005-09-26'              ,
   nation  => 'Japan'                   ,
   pref    => 'Saitama'                 ,
   city    => 'Kawaguchi'               ,
   tel     => '+81-48-2XX-XXXX'         ,
   fax     => '+81-48-2XX-XXXX'         ,
   job     => 'student'                 ,
   role    => 'president'               ,
   hobby   => 'exaggeration'            ,
);

my $encoded = etsv_encode(%param);

my %decoded = estv_decode($encoded);

DESCRIPTION

This module provides functions to manipulate ETSV. ETSV (Enhanced Tab Separated Values) is a data table format which I originated. This enhancement to TSV format has two features.

1. escaped characters

Only five kind of charaters are escaped. Those are [TAB] (for the column separater), [CR] or [LF] (for the line separater), '=' (for the name-value separater) and '%' (for the token of escaped string).

2. object oriented values

All of values are coupled with its name. So all of values know their name by themselvs. It is like an object oriented way. Besides of a few size of overhead, it is very useful for the human usability and flexibility.

For example, a ETSV data table is like below:

name1=value1[TAB]name2=value2[TAB]name3=value3[TAB]...[LF]
name1=value1[TAB]name2=value2[TAB]name3=value3[TAB]...[LF]
(...)

FUNCTIONS

etsv_encode(%param)

This function encode some hash (%) parameters to a line (table row).

etsv_decode($row)

This function decode a ETSV encoded row to hash (%) parameters.

TSV vs CSV

I prefer to use TSV rather than CSV. Because, [TAB] is the control character just for the purpose, isn't it? Comma is not a control character and it is used also for human language purpose. Need for escaping comma in CSV would happen oftenly while that for escaping [TAB] in TSV would rarely.

AUTHOR

Masanori HATA <lovewing@dream.big.or.jp> (Saitama, JAPAN)

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 2005 Masanori HATA. All rights reserved.

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