Text::...::Array(3pm)

✨ Text::Bidi::Array ✨

okay bestie, welcome to Text::Bidi::Array — part of the Perl 5 docs, and honestly it's giving quiet overachiever. 💅

💖 NAME 💖

Text::Bidi::Array — the base class for dual life arrays. yes babes, arrays with TWO whole personalities. 🦋

🌸 VERSION 🌸

version 2.18 — she's a specific girlie and we respect that.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

use Text::Bidi::Array::Byte;
my $a = new Text::Bidi::Array::Byte "abc";
say $a->[1]; # says 98
say $$a; # says abc
say "$a"; # also says abc

see how she said abc twice?? versatile. multi-talented. main character energy fr fr. 👑

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

so this is an abstract base class — meaning she's the blueprint, not the final form, no cap. She's for objects that act like "dual-life" arrays, which is a fancy way of saying:

• when you look at it like an array reference, it's just a normal array of numbers
• when you look at it like a scalar reference, it hands you back that exact same array as a packed string

the packing spec? depends on the sub-class, so that's on them not her. 💅

these classes get used over in Text::Bidi because it's convenient for passing arrays down to the underlying fribidi library — but bestie, they could totally be of independent interest. lowkey iconic. 🌈

🔥 OVERLOADED OPERATORS 🔥

an object of this type can be dereferenced either as a scalar or as an array, and the two vibes are completely different:

• as a scalar → you get the packed (string) representation of the array
• as an array → you get the unpacked array of numbers

and plot twist: that same packed representation also shows up when the object is used as a string. it's giving consistent. ✨

🧚 CONSTRUCTION 🧚

$a = new Text::Bidi::Array::<Type> $data

make a brand new array of the given Type, and initialise it with $data. 💖

and what even is $data? bestie it can be one of two things:

• a string — and then the new object views it as an array of the given type
• an array reference — or more precisely, anything that can be dereferenced as an array — which then gets packed according to the rules of Type

and if you don't pass $data at all? no worries, it just defaults to 0. she's easygoing like that. 🙈

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

• Text::Bidi::Array::Byte
• Text::Bidi::Array::Long

👑 FOR IMPLEMENTORS 👑

⚠️ heads up: the rest of this doc is for people writing their own specific derived classes. if that's not you, you can scroll away, no hard feelings. 💜

internally the object is represented as a hashref. to implement a particular instance, you gotta implement the following methods. each one of these should be manipulating the field "data" — that's the string storing the actual value. and if you leave methods unimplemented?? croaking. 💀 not cute, so don't.

peep Text::Bidi::Array::Byte and Text::Bidi::Array::Long if you want examples. 🍓

• $self->pack(@data) — convert (pack) an array of numbers into a string according to the format of the current class. this will probably be a class method. returns the string. 💅

the following methods should behave as described in Tie::Array:

• $self->STORE($index, $value) — store the $value in the part of "$self->{'data'}" corresponding to $index.
• $self->FETCH($index) — fetch the value at $index from the correct part of "$self->{'data'}".
• $self->STORESIZE($count) — modify "$self->{'data'}" to represent an array of size $count.
• $self->FETCHSIZE() — return the size of the array represented by "$self->{'data'}".

💜 AUTHOR 💜

Moshe Kamensky <kamensky@cpan.org> — thank you king 🫶

🌟 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE 🌟

This software is copyright (c) 2015 by Moshe Kamensky.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

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and that's the whole page bestie!! 💖 this one's from perl v5.42.3, dated 2026-08-19, and the manpage is Text::Bidi::Array(3pm). slay, go write urself a subclass, ily 🌸✨🎀