MARC::Fast(3pm)

💖 MARC::Fast 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to MARC::Fast(3pm) — that's the User Contributed Perl Documentation corner of the manual, and honestly? this module ate. it's a very fast implementation of a MARC database reader, and it's about to be your new main character. 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

MARC::Fast — very fast implementation of MARC database reader 🦋

---

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

okay so the whole vibe is literally this:

  use MARC::Fast;

  my $marc = new MARC::Fast(
        marcdb => 'unimarc.iso',
  );

  foreach my $mfn ( 1 .. $marc->count ) {
        print $marc->to_ascii( $mfn );
  }

and if you want a longer example, one that's got command line options and everything, go peek at dump_fastmarc.pl in scripts. it's giving demo energy. 💅

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so this is the very fast alternative to the MARC and MARC::Record modules. like, speed. that's the whole point. 🏎️✨

and ngl it's also very suitable for random access to MARC records — as opposed to doing it sequentially, one after another, like some kind of peasant. random access is the moment. 👑

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💅 METHODS 💅

💖 new 💖

reads the MARC database. yes queen, it opens it up and everything.

  my $marc = new MARC::Fast(
        marcdb => 'unimarc.iso',
        quiet => 0,
        debug => 0,
        assert => 0,
        hash_filter => sub {
                my ($t, $record_number) = @_;
                $t =~ s/foo/bar/;
                return $t;
        },
  );

🔥 count 🔥

returns how many records are in the database. the headcount. the roster. the guest list. 🎟️

  print $marc->count;

🌈 fetch 🌈

fetches a record from the database. grabby hands. 🙌

  my $hash = $marc->fetch(42);

heads up bestie: the first record number is 1. not zero. one. periodt. 💀

🎀 last_leader 🎀

returns the leader of the last record that got fetched. like, who's in charge of the most recent one. 👑

  print $marc->last_leader;

okay so this got added in version 0.08 of this module, so if you actually need it you should write:

  use MARC::Fast 0.08;

just to be sure it's supported. manifesting it into existence, fr fr. ✨

🧚 to_hash 🧚

reads a record with the specified MFN and converts it into a hash. glow-up complete. 💫

  my $hash = $marc->to_hash( $mfn, include_subfields => 1,
        hash_filter => sub { my ($l,$tag) = @_; return $l; }
  );

it's got this ability to convert characters (using hash_filter) from the MARC database before creating the structures — which means you can re-map characters or do a quick little fix-up of your data. and listen: if you specify hash_filter in both new and to_hash, then only the one from to_hash gets used. to_hash wins. no debate. 👑

this function returns a hash that looks like this:

  '200' => [
             {
               'i1' => '1',
               'i2' => ' '
               'a' => 'Goa',
               'f' => 'Valdo D\'Arienzo',
               'e' => 'tipografie e tipografi nel XVI secolo',
             }
           ],

and this method also creates an additional field 000 with the MFN in it. bonus content, bestie. 🎁

🌟 to_ascii 🌟

  print $marc->to_ascii( 42 );

🫶 UTF-8 ENCODING 🫶

okay so this module does nothing with encoding. nothing at all. it's not its job. but here's the thing: since the MARC format is byte oriented — even when you're using UTF-8, which has a variable number of bytes for each character — the file gets opened in binary mode.

as a result, all the scalars returned to perl don't have the utf-8 flag. so what do you do? the solution is to use hash_filter and Encode to decode the utf-8 encoding, like this:

  use Encode;

  my $marc = new MARC::Fast(
        marcdb => 'utf8.marc',
        hash_filter => sub {
                Encode::decode( 'utf-8', $_[0] );
        },
  );

this will affect to_hash, but fetch will still return binary representation since it doesn't support hash_filter. so don't come for fetch, it simply cannot. 🙈

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

the icon, the legend, the moment:

• Dobrica Pavlinusic
• CPAN ID: DPAVLIN
• dpavlin@rot13.org
• http://www.rot13.org/~dpavlin/

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🌸 COPYRIGHT 🌸

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

the full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this module. go read it, it's right there. 📜

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• Biblio::Isis
• perl(1)

iykyk. 💅

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okay that's the whole page bestie, we ate and left no crumbs 🍓 — this was MARC::Fast(3pm) from perl v5.36.0, dated 2023-01-29. go read some MARC records. mwah. 💖✨🎀🦋