NAME

Convert::Bencode - Functions for converting to/from bencoded strings

SYNOPSIS

use Convert::Bencode qw(bencode bdecode);

my $string = "d4:ainti12345e3:key5:value4:type4:teste";
my $hashref = bdecode($string);

foreach my $key (keys(%{$hashref})) {
    print "Key: $key, Value: ${$hashref}{$key}\n";
}

my $encoded_string = bencode($hashref);
print $encoded_string."\n";

DESCRIPTION

This module provides two functions, bencode and bdecode, which encode and decode bencoded strings respectivly.

Encoding

bencode() expects to be passed a single value, which is either a scalar, a arrary ref, or a hash ref, and it returns a scalar containing the bencoded representation of the data structure it was passed. If the value passed was a scalar, it returns either a bencoded string, or a bencoded integer (floating points are not implemented, and would be returned as a string rather than a integer). If the value was a array ref, it returns a bencoded list, with all the values of that array also bencoded recursivly. If the value was a hash ref, it returns a bencoded dictionary (which for all intents and purposes can be thought of as a synonym for hash) containing the recursivly bencoded key and value pairs of the hash.

Decoding

bdecode() expects to be passed a single scalar containing the bencoded string to be decoded. Its return value will be either a hash ref, a array ref, or a scalar, depending on whether the outer most element of the bencoded string was a dictionary, list, or a string/integer respectivly.

SEE ALSO

The description of bencode is part of the bittorrent protocol specification which can be found at http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/protocol.html

BUGS

None that I know of.

AUTHOR & COPYRIGHT

Created by R. Kyle Murphy <orclev@rejectedmaterial.com>, aka Orclev.

Copyright 2003 R. Kyle Murphy. All rights reserved. Convert::Bencode is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.