1Bencode(3)            User Contributed Perl Documentation           Bencode(3)
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NAME

6       Bencode - BitTorrent serialisation format
7

VERSION

9       version 1.501
10

SYNOPSIS

12        use Bencode qw( bencode bdecode );
13
14        my $bencoded = bencode { 'age' => 25, 'eyes' => 'blue' };
15        print $bencoded, "\n";
16        my $decoded = bdecode $bencoded;
17

DESCRIPTION

19       This module implements the BitTorrent bencode serialisation format, as
20       described in <http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0003.html#bencoding>.
21

INTERFACE

23   "bencode( $datastructure [, $undef_mode ] )"
24       Takes data to be encoded as a single argument which may be a scalar, or
25       may be a reference to either a scalar, an array or a hash. Arrays and
26       hashes may in turn contain values of these same types. Plain scalars
27       that look like canonically represented integers will be serialised as
28       such. To bypass the heuristic and force serialisation as a string, use
29       a reference to a scalar.
30
31       The second argument is optional (in which case it defaults to "str")
32       and specifies how to treat "undef" values. You can pick one of three
33       options:
34
35       "str" to encode "undef"s as empty strings;
36
37       "num" to encode "undef"s as zeroes;
38
39       "die" to croak upon encountering an "undef" value.
40
41       Croaks on unhandled data types.
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43   "bdecode( $string [, $do_lenient_decode [, $max_depth ] ] )"
44       Takes a string and returns the corresponding deserialised data
45       structure.
46
47       If you pass a true value for the second option, it will disregard the
48       sort order of dict keys. This violation of the bencode format is
49       somewhat common.
50
51       If you pass an integer for the third option, it will croak when
52       attempting to parse dictionaries nested deeper than this level, to
53       prevent DoS attacks using maliciously crafted input.
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55       Croaks on malformed data.
56

DIAGNOSTICS

58       "trailing garbage at %s"
59           Your data does not end after the first bencode-serialised item.
60
61           You may also get this error if a malformed item follows.
62
63       "garbage at %s"
64           Your data is malformed.
65
66       "unexpected end of data at %s"
67           Your data is truncated.
68
69       "unexpected end of string data starting at %s"
70           Your data includes a string declared to be longer than the
71           available data.
72
73       "malformed string length at %s"
74           Your data contained a string with negative length or a length with
75           leading zeroes.
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77       "malformed integer data at %s"
78           Your data contained something that was supposed to be an integer
79           but didn't make sense.
80
81       "dict key not in sort order at %s"
82           Your data violates the bencode format constaint that dict keys must
83           appear in lexical sort order.
84
85       "duplicate dict key at %s"
86           Your data violates the bencode format constaint that all dict keys
87           must be unique.
88
89       "dict key is not a string at %s"
90           Your data violates the bencode format constaint that all dict keys
91           be strings.
92
93       "dict key is missing value at %s"
94           Your data contains a dictionary with an odd number of elements.
95
96       "nesting depth exceeded at %s"
97           Your data contains dicts or lists that are nested deeper than the
98           $max_depth passed to "bdecode()".
99
100       "unhandled data type"
101           You are trying to serialise a data structure that consists of data
102           types other than
103
104           •   scalars
105
106           •   references to arrays
107
108           •   references to hashes
109
110           •   references to scalars
111
112           The format does not support this.
113

BUGS AND LIMITATIONS

115       Strings and numbers are practically indistinguishable in Perl, so
116       "bencode()" has to resort to a heuristic to decide how to serialise a
117       scalar. This cannot be fixed.
118

AUTHOR

120       Aristotle Pagaltzis <pagaltzis@gmx.de>
121

123       This software is copyright (c) 2017 by Aristotle Pagaltzis.
124
125       This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
126       the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.
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130perl v5.34.0                      2021-07-22                        Bencode(3)
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