/ 
Number-RecordLocator-0.005
River stage one • 3 direct dependents • 4 total dependents
/ Number::RecordLocator

NAME

Number::RecordLocator - Encodes integers into a short and easy to read and pronounce "locator string"

SYNOPSIS

  use Number::RecordLocator;

  my $generator = Number::RecordLocator->new();
  my $string = $generator->encode("123456");

  # $string = "5RL2";

  my $number = $generator->decode($string);

  # $number = "123456";

DESCRIPTION

Number::RecordLocator encodes integers into a 32 character "alphabet" designed to be short and easy to read and pronounce. The encoding maps:

0 to O
1 to I
S to F 
B to P

With a 32 bit encoding, you can map 33.5 million unique ids into a 5 character code.

This certainly isn't an exact science and I'm not yet 100% sure of the encoding. Feedback is much appreciated.

new

Instantiate a new Number::RecordLocator object. Right now, we don't actually store any object-specific data, but in the future, we might.

init

Initializes our integer to character and character to integer mapping tables.

encode INTEGER

Takes an integer. Returns a Record Locator string.

decode STRING

Takes a record locator string and returns an integer. If you pass in a string containing an invalid character, it returns undef.

canonicalize STRING

To compare a Record Locator string with another you can do:

print "ALWAYS TRUE\n" if $generator->decode("B0") == $generator->decode("PO");

However, this method provides an alternative:

my $rl_string = $generator->encode(725);
print "ALWAYS TRUE\n" if $generator->canonicalize("b0") eq $rl_string;
print "ALWAYS TRUE\n" if $generator->canonicalize("BO") eq $rl_string;
print "ALWAYS TRUE\n" if $generator->canonicalize("P0") eq $rl_string;
print "ALWAYS TRUE\n" if $generator->canonicalize("po") eq $rl_string;

This is primarily useful if you store the record locator rather than just the original integer and don't want to have to decode your strings to do comparisons.

Takes a general Record Locator string and returns one with character mappings listed in "DESCRIPTION" applied to it. This allows string comparisons to work. This returns undef if a non-alphanumeric character is found in the string.

BUGS AND LIMITATIONS

No bugs have been reported.

Please report any bugs or feature requests to bug-number-recordlocator@rt.cpan.org, or through the web interface at http://rt.cpan.org.

AUTHOR

Jesse Vincent <jesse@bestpractical.com>

LICENCE AND COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 2006, Best Practical Solutions, LLC. All rights reserved.

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