Catman...erator(3pm)

💖 Catmandu::Iterator — the manual page, but make it cute 💖

okay bestie, so you've stumbled into Catman...erator(3pm) — yes that's the page title, it's giving ✨user contributed Perl documentation✨ energy, and it's literally all about Catmandu::Iterator, the base class for all Catmandu iterators 👑. It's a 3pm page, so it's Perl module docs, and honestly? iconic. periodt.

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🌸 NAME 🌸

Catmandu::Iterator — the base class for all Catmandu iterators 💅

Like, every iterator in Catmandu-land descends from this thing. It's the blueprint. The mother of iterators. The moment. 🦋

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

Here's the vibe, copied exactly because code is sacred and I do not play with it:

package My::MockIterator;

use Catmandu;
use Moo;

with 'Catmandu::Iterable';

sub generator {
  sub {
      # Generator some random data
      +{ random => rand };
  }
}

package main;

my $it = My::MockIterator->new;

my $first = $it->first;

$it->each(sub {
my $item = shift;

print $item->{random} , "\n";
});

my $it2 = $it->map(sub { shift->{random} * 2 });

So what's happening here, bestie? You roll your own class, you pull in Catmandu and Moo, you with 'Catmandu::Iterable' (that's the role doing the heavy lifting, iykyk), and then you define a generator that hands back a closure. That closure spits out one Perl hash at a time. Then ->new gives you an iterator, ->first grabs you the first item, ->each walks the whole thing and prints each random value, and ->map gives you a whole new iterator where every random got doubled. 🔥

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🎀 METHODS 🎀

🧚 generator

Should return a closure that generates one Perl hash. That's it. That's the whole job. One hash per call, over and over, like a little hash vending machine. 🍓

fr fr, if you don't give it a generator that returns a closure, the magic does not happen. no generator, no slay.

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🌈 INHERIT 🌈

Okay so here's the tea: if you provide a generator, then the class will generator all methods from Catmandu::Iterable. (Yes, that's what the original says — "generator" as a verb. We respect the original's grammar choices in this house. 💀)

Translation: you bring the one tiny generator, and Catmandu::Iterable shows up with the entire method catalogue. Main character energy from a two-line subclass. 👑

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

• Catmandu::Iterable — go read this one next, bestie, it's literally where all the inherited methods live 🫶

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and that's the whole page!! no cap, every single detail is in here, I did not skip a single crumb 🙈

cute lil sign-off: this page ships as part of perl v5.40.1, dated 2026-01-24, and it was written for User Contributed Perl Documentation — aka the people's docs, the community's finest. 💖✨🎀🦋🌸💅🌈⭐💜