1Storable(3pm) Perl Programmers Reference Guide Storable(3pm)
2
6 Storable - persistence for Perl data structures
7
9 use Storable;
10 store \%table, 'file';
11 $hashref = retrieve('file');
12 use Storable qw(nstore store_fd nstore_fd freeze thaw dclone);
14 # Network order
16 nstore \%table, 'file';
17 $hashref = retrieve('file'); # There is NO nretrieve()
18 # Storing to and retrieving from an already opened file
20 store_fd \@array, \*STDOUT;
21 nstore_fd \%table, \*STDOUT;
22 $aryref = fd_retrieve(\*SOCKET);
23 $hashref = fd_retrieve(\*SOCKET);
24 # Serializing to memory
26 $serialized = freeze \%table;
27 %table_clone = %{ thaw($serialized) };
28 # Deep (recursive) cloning
30 $cloneref = dclone($ref);
31 # Advisory locking
33 use Storable qw(lock_store lock_nstore lock_retrieve)
34 lock_store \%table, 'file';
35 lock_nstore \%table, 'file';
36 $hashref = lock_retrieve('file');
37
39 The Storable package brings persistence to your Perl data structures
40 containing SCALAR, ARRAY, HASH or REF objects, i.e. anything that can
41 be conveniently stored to disk and retrieved at a later time.
42 It can be used in the regular procedural way by calling "store" with a
44 reference to the object to be stored, along with the file name where
45 the image should be written.
46 The routine returns "undef" for I/O problems or other internal error, a
48 true value otherwise. Serious errors are propagated as a "die" excep‐
49 tion.
50 To retrieve data stored to disk, use "retrieve" with a file name. The
52 objects stored into that file are recreated into memory for you, and a
53 reference to the root object is returned. In case an I/O error occurs
54 while reading, "undef" is returned instead. Other serious errors are
55 propagated via "die".
56 Since storage is performed recursively, you might want to stuff refer‐
58 ences to objects that share a lot of common data into a single array or
59 hash table, and then store that object. That way, when you retrieve
60 back the whole thing, the objects will continue to share what they
61 originally shared.
62 At the cost of a slight header overhead, you may store to an already
64 opened file descriptor using the "store_fd" routine, and retrieve from
65 a file via "fd_retrieve". Those names aren't imported by default, so
66 you will have to do that explicitly if you need those routines. The
67 file descriptor you supply must be already opened, for read if you're
68 going to retrieve and for write if you wish to store.
69 store_fd(\%table, *STDOUT) ⎪⎪ die "can't store to stdout\n";
71 $hashref = fd_retrieve(*STDIN);
72 You can also store data in network order to allow easy sharing across
74 multiple platforms, or when storing on a socket known to be remotely
75 connected. The routines to call have an initial "n" prefix for network,
76 as in "nstore" and "nstore_fd". At retrieval time, your data will be
77 correctly restored so you don't have to know whether you're restoring
78 from native or network ordered data. Double values are stored stringi‐
79 fied to ensure portability as well, at the slight risk of loosing some
80 precision in the last decimals.
81 When using "fd_retrieve", objects are retrieved in sequence, one object
83 (i.e. one recursive tree) per associated "store_fd".
84 If you're more from the object-oriented camp, you can inherit from
86 Storable and directly store your objects by invoking "store" as a
87 method. The fact that the root of the to-be-stored tree is a blessed
88 reference (i.e. an object) is special-cased so that the retrieve does
89 not provide a reference to that object but rather the blessed object
90 reference itself. (Otherwise, you'd get a reference to that blessed
91 object).
92
94 The Storable engine can also store data into a Perl scalar instead, to
95 later retrieve them. This is mainly used to freeze a complex structure
96 in some safe compact memory place (where it can possibly be sent to
97 another process via some IPC, since freezing the structure also serial‐
98 izes it in effect). Later on, and maybe somewhere else, you can thaw
99 the Perl scalar out and recreate the original complex structure in mem‐
100 ory.
101 Surprisingly, the routines to be called are named "freeze" and "thaw".
103 If you wish to send out the frozen scalar to another machine, use
104 "nfreeze" instead to get a portable image.
105 Note that freezing an object structure and immediately thawing it actu‐
107 ally achieves a deep cloning of that structure:
108 dclone(.) = thaw(freeze(.))
110 Storable provides you with a "dclone" interface which does not create
112 that intermediary scalar but instead freezes the structure in some
113 internal memory space and then immediately thaws it out.
114
116 The "lock_store" and "lock_nstore" routine are equivalent to "store"
117 and "nstore", except that they get an exclusive lock on the file before
118 writing. Likewise, "lock_retrieve" does the same as "retrieve", but
119 also gets a shared lock on the file before reading.
120 As with any advisory locking scheme, the protection only works if you
122 systematically use "lock_store" and "lock_retrieve". If one side of
123 your application uses "store" whilst the other uses "lock_retrieve",
124 you will get no protection at all.
125 The internal advisory locking is implemented using Perl's flock() rou‐
127 tine. If your system does not support any form of flock(), or if you
128 share your files across NFS, you might wish to use other forms of lock‐
129 ing by using modules such as LockFile::Simple which lock a file using a
130 filesystem entry, instead of locking the file descriptor.
131
133 The heart of Storable is written in C for decent speed. Extra low-level
134 optimizations have been made when manipulating perl internals, to sac‐
135 rifice encapsulation for the benefit of greater speed.
136
138 Normally, Storable stores elements of hashes in the order they are
139 stored internally by Perl, i.e. pseudo-randomly. If you set
140 $Storable::canonical to some "TRUE" value, Storable will store hashes
141 with the elements sorted by their key. This allows you to compare data
142 structures by comparing their frozen representations (or even the com‐
143 pressed frozen representations), which can be useful for creating
144 lookup tables for complicated queries.
145 Canonical order does not imply network order; those are two orthogonal
147 settings.
148
150 Since Storable version 2.05, CODE references may be serialized with the
151 help of B::Deparse. To enable this feature, set $Storable::Deparse to a
152 true value. To enable deserializazion, $Storable::Eval should be set to
153 a true value. Be aware that deserialization is done through "eval",
154 which is dangerous if the Storable file contains malicious data. You
155 can set $Storable::Eval to a subroutine reference which would be used
156 instead of "eval". See below for an example using a Safe compartment
157 for deserialization of CODE references.
158 If $Storable::Deparse and/or $Storable::Eval are set to false values,
160 then the value of $Storable::forgive_me (see below) is respected while
161 serializing and deserializing.
162
164 This release of Storable can be used on a newer version of Perl to
165 serialize data which is not supported by earlier Perls. By default,
166 Storable will attempt to do the right thing, by "croak()"ing if it
167 encounters data that it cannot deserialize. However, the defaults can
168 be changed as follows:
169 utf8 data
171 Perl 5.6 added support for Unicode characters with code points >
172 255, and Perl 5.8 has full support for Unicode characters in hash
173 keys. Perl internally encodes strings with these characters using
174 utf8, and Storable serializes them as utf8. By default, if an
175 older version of Perl encounters a utf8 value it cannot represent,
176 it will "croak()". To change this behaviour so that Storable dese‐
177 rializes utf8 encoded values as the string of bytes (effectively
178 dropping the is_utf8 flag) set $Storable::drop_utf8 to some "TRUE"
179 value. This is a form of data loss, because with $drop_utf8 true,
180 it becomes impossible to tell whether the original data was the
181 Unicode string, or a series of bytes that happen to be valid utf8.
182 restricted hashes
184 Perl 5.8 adds support for restricted hashes, which have keys
185 restricted to a given set, and can have values locked to be read
186 only. By default, when Storable encounters a restricted hash on a
187 perl that doesn't support them, it will deserialize it as a normal
188 hash, silently discarding any placeholder keys and leaving the keys
189 and all values unlocked. To make Storable "croak()" instead, set
190 $Storable::downgrade_restricted to a "FALSE" value. To restore the
191 default set it back to some "TRUE" value.
192 files from future versions of Storable
194 Earlier versions of Storable would immediately croak if they
195 encountered a file with a higher internal version number than the
196 reading Storable knew about. Internal version numbers are
197 increased each time new data types (such as restricted hashes) are
198 added to the vocabulary of the file format. This meant that a
199 newer Storable module had no way of writing a file readable by an
200 older Storable, even if the writer didn't store newer data types.
201 This version of Storable will defer croaking until it encounters a
203 data type in the file that it does not recognize. This means that
204 it will continue to read files generated by newer Storable modules
205 which are careful in what they write out, making it easier to
206 upgrade Storable modules in a mixed environment.
207 The old behaviour of immediate croaking can be re-instated by set‐
209 ting $Storable::accept_future_minor to some "FALSE" value.
210 All these variables have no effect on a newer Perl which supports the
212 relevant feature.
213
215 Storable uses the "exception" paradigm, in that it does not try to
216 workaround failures: if something bad happens, an exception is gener‐
217 ated from the caller's perspective (see Carp and "croak()"). Use eval
218 {} to trap those exceptions.
219 When Storable croaks, it tries to report the error via the "logcroak()"
221 routine from the "Log::Agent" package, if it is available.
222 Normal errors are reported by having store() or retrieve() return
224 "undef". Such errors are usually I/O errors (or truncated stream
225 errors at retrieval).
226
228 Hooks
229 Any class may define hooks that will be called during the serialization
231 and deserialization process on objects that are instances of that
232 class. Those hooks can redefine the way serialization is performed
233 (and therefore, how the symmetrical deserialization should be con‐
234 ducted).
235 Since we said earlier:
237 dclone(.) = thaw(freeze(.))
239 everything we say about hooks should also hold for deep cloning. How‐
241 ever, hooks get to know whether the operation is a mere serialization,
242 or a cloning.
243 Therefore, when serializing hooks are involved,
245 dclone(.) <> thaw(freeze(.))
247 Well, you could keep them in sync, but there's no guarantee it will
249 always hold on classes somebody else wrote. Besides, there is little
250 to gain in doing so: a serializing hook could keep only one attribute
251 of an object, which is probably not what should happen during a deep
252 cloning of that same object.
253 Here is the hooking interface:
255 "STORABLE_freeze" obj, cloning
257 The serializing hook, called on the object during serialization.
258 It can be inherited, or defined in the class itself, like any other
259 method.
260 Arguments: obj is the object to serialize, cloning is a flag indi‐
262 cating whether we're in a dclone() or a regular serialization via
263 store() or freeze().
264 Returned value: A LIST "($serialized, $ref1, $ref2, ...)" where
266 $serialized is the serialized form to be used, and the optional
267 $ref1, $ref2, etc... are extra references that you wish to let the
268 Storable engine serialize.
269 At deserialization time, you will be given back the same LIST, but
271 all the extra references will be pointing into the deserialized
272 structure.
273 The first time the hook is hit in a serialization flow, you may
275 have it return an empty list. That will signal the Storable engine
276 to further discard that hook for this class and to therefore revert
277 to the default serialization of the underlying Perl data. The hook
278 will again be normally processed in the next serialization.
279 Unless you know better, serializing hook should always say:
281 sub STORABLE_freeze {
283 my ($self, $cloning) = @_;
284 return if $cloning; # Regular default serialization
285 ....
286 }
287 in order to keep reasonable dclone() semantics.
289 "STORABLE_thaw" obj, cloning, serialized, ...
291 The deserializing hook called on the object during deserialization.
292 But wait: if we're deserializing, there's no object yet... right?
293 Wrong: the Storable engine creates an empty one for you. If you
295 know Eiffel, you can view "STORABLE_thaw" as an alternate creation
296 routine.
297 This means the hook can be inherited like any other method, and
299 that obj is your blessed reference for this particular instance.
300 The other arguments should look familiar if you know
302 "STORABLE_freeze": cloning is true when we're part of a deep clone
303 operation, serialized is the serialized string you returned to the
304 engine in "STORABLE_freeze", and there may be an optional list of
305 references, in the same order you gave them at serialization time,
306 pointing to the deserialized objects (which have been processed
307 courtesy of the Storable engine).
308 When the Storable engine does not find any "STORABLE_thaw" hook
310 routine, it tries to load the class by requiring the package dynam‐
311 ically (using the blessed package name), and then re-attempts the
312 lookup. If at that time the hook cannot be located, the engine
313 croaks. Note that this mechanism will fail if you define several
314 classes in the same file, but perlmod warned you.
315 It is up to you to use this information to populate obj the way you
317 want.
318 Returned value: none.
320 "STORABLE_attach" class, cloning, serialized
322 While "STORABLE_freeze" and "STORABLE_thaw" are useful for classes
323 where each instance is independant, this mechanism has difficulty
324 (or is incompatible) with objects that exist as common process-
325 level or system-level resources, such as singleton objects, data‐
326 base pools, caches or memoized objects.
327 The alternative "STORABLE_attach" method provides a solution for
329 these shared objects. Instead of "STORABLE_freeze" --E<GT>
330 "STORABLE_thaw", you implement "STORABLE_freeze" --E<GT>
331 "STORABLE_attach" instead.
332 Arguments: class is the class we are attaching to, cloning is a
334 flag indicating whether we're in a dclone() or a regular de-serial‐
335 ization via thaw(), and serialized is the stored string for the
336 resource object.
337 Because these resource objects are considered to be owned by the
339 entire process/system, and not the "property" of whatever is being
340 serialized, no references underneath the object should be included
341 in the serialized string. Thus, in any class that implements
342 "STORABLE_attach", the "STORABLE_freeze" method cannot return any
343 references, and "Storable" will throw an error if "STORABLE_freeze"
344 tries to return references.
345 All information required to "attach" back to the shared resource
347 object must be contained only in the "STORABLE_freeze" return
348 string. Otherwise, "STORABLE_freeze" behaves as normal for
349 "STORABLE_attach" classes.
350 Because "STORABLE_attach" is passed the class (rather than an
352 object), it also returns the object directly, rather than modifying
353 the passed object.
354 Returned value: object of type "class"
356 Predicates
358 Predicates are not exportable. They must be called by explicitly pre‐
360 fixing them with the Storable package name.
361 "Storable::last_op_in_netorder"
363 The "Storable::last_op_in_netorder()" predicate will tell you
364 whether network order was used in the last store or retrieve opera‐
365 tion. If you don't know how to use this, just forget about it.
366 "Storable::is_storing"
368 Returns true if within a store operation (via STORABLE_freeze
369 hook).
370 "Storable::is_retrieving"
372 Returns true if within a retrieve operation (via STORABLE_thaw
373 hook).
374 Recursion
376 With hooks comes the ability to recurse back to the Storable engine.
378 Indeed, hooks are regular Perl code, and Storable is convenient when it
379 comes to serializing and deserializing things, so why not use it to
380 handle the serialization string?
381 There are a few things you need to know, however:
383 · You can create endless loops if the things you serialize via
385 freeze() (for instance) point back to the object we're trying to
386 serialize in the hook.
387 · Shared references among objects will not stay shared: if we're
389 serializing the list of object [A, C] where both object A and C
390 refer to the SAME object B, and if there is a serializing hook in A
391 that says freeze(B), then when deserializing, we'll get [A', C']
392 where A' refers to B', but C' refers to D, a deep clone of B'. The
393 topology was not preserved.
394 That's why "STORABLE_freeze" lets you provide a list of references to
396 serialize. The engine guarantees that those will be serialized in the
397 same context as the other objects, and therefore that shared objects
398 will stay shared.
399 In the above [A, C] example, the "STORABLE_freeze" hook could return:
401 ("something", $self->{B})
403 and the B part would be serialized by the engine. In "STORABLE_thaw",
405 you would get back the reference to the B' object, deserialized for
406 you.
407 Therefore, recursion should normally be avoided, but is nonetheless
409 supported.
410 Deep Cloning
412 There is a Clone module available on CPAN which implements deep cloning
414 natively, i.e. without freezing to memory and thawing the result. It
415 is aimed to replace Storable's dclone() some day. However, it does not
416 currently support Storable hooks to redefine the way deep cloning is
417 performed.
418
420 Yes, there's a lot of that :-) But more precisely, in UNIX systems
421 there's a utility called "file", which recognizes data files based on
422 their contents (usually their first few bytes). For this to work, a
423 certain file called magic needs to taught about the signature of the
424 data. Where that configuration file lives depends on the UNIX flavour;
425 often it's something like /usr/share/misc/magic or /etc/magic. Your
426 system administrator needs to do the updating of the magic file. The
427 necessary signature information is output to STDOUT by invoking
428 Storable::show_file_magic(). Note that the GNU implementation of the
429 "file" utility, version 3.38 or later, is expected to contain support
430 for recognising Storable files out-of-the-box, in addition to other
431 kinds of Perl files.
432
434 Here are some code samples showing a possible usage of Storable:
435 use Storable qw(store retrieve freeze thaw dclone);
437 %color = ('Blue' => 0.1, 'Red' => 0.8, 'Black' => 0, 'White' => 1);
439 store(\%color, 'mycolors') or die "Can't store %a in mycolors!\n";
441 $colref = retrieve('mycolors');
443 die "Unable to retrieve from mycolors!\n" unless defined $colref;
444 printf "Blue is still %lf\n", $colref->{'Blue'};
445 $colref2 = dclone(\%color);
447 $str = freeze(\%color);
449 printf "Serialization of %%color is %d bytes long.\n", length($str);
450 $colref3 = thaw($str);
451 which prints (on my machine):
453 Blue is still 0.100000
455 Serialization of %color is 102 bytes long.
456 Serialization of CODE references and deserialization in a safe compart‐
458 ment:
459 use Storable qw(freeze thaw);
461 use Safe;
462 use strict;
463 my $safe = new Safe;
464 # because of opcodes used in "use strict":
465 $safe->permit(qw(:default require));
466 local $Storable::Deparse = 1;
467 local $Storable::Eval = sub { $safe->reval($_[0]) };
468 my $serialized = freeze(sub { 42 });
469 my $code = thaw($serialized);
470 $code->() == 42;
471
473 If you're using references as keys within your hash tables, you're
474 bound to be disappointed when retrieving your data. Indeed, Perl
475 stringifies references used as hash table keys. If you later wish to
476 access the items via another reference stringification (i.e. using the
477 same reference that was used for the key originally to record the value
478 into the hash table), it will work because both references stringify to
479 the same string.
480 It won't work across a sequence of "store" and "retrieve" operations,
482 however, because the addresses in the retrieved objects, which are part
483 of the stringified references, will probably differ from the original
484 addresses. The topology of your structure is preserved, but not hidden
485 semantics like those.
486 On platforms where it matters, be sure to call "binmode()" on the
488 descriptors that you pass to Storable functions.
489 Storing data canonically that contains large hashes can be signifi‐
491 cantly slower than storing the same data normally, as temporary arrays
492 to hold the keys for each hash have to be allocated, populated, sorted
493 and freed. Some tests have shown a halving of the speed of storing --
494 the exact penalty will depend on the complexity of your data. There is
495 no slowdown on retrieval.
496
498 You can't store GLOB, FORMLINE, etc.... If you can define semantics for
499 those operations, feel free to enhance Storable so that it can deal
500 with them.
501 The store functions will "croak" if they run into such references
503 unless you set $Storable::forgive_me to some "TRUE" value. In that
504 case, the fatal message is turned in a warning and some meaningless
505 string is stored instead.
506 Setting $Storable::canonical may not yield frozen strings that compare
508 equal due to possible stringification of numbers. When the string ver‐
509 sion of a scalar exists, it is the form stored; therefore, if you hap‐
510 pen to use your numbers as strings between two freezing operations on
511 the same data structures, you will get different results.
512 When storing doubles in network order, their value is stored as text.
514 However, you should also not expect non-numeric floating-point values
515 such as infinity and "not a number" to pass successfully through a
516 nstore()/retrieve() pair.
517 As Storable neither knows nor cares about character sets (although it
519 does know that characters may be more than eight bits wide), any dif‐
520 ference in the interpretation of character codes between a host and a
521 target system is your problem. In particular, if host and target use
522 different code points to represent the characters used in the text rep‐
523 resentation of floating-point numbers, you will not be able be able to
524 exchange floating-point data, even with nstore().
525 "Storable::drop_utf8" is a blunt tool. There is no facility either to
527 return all strings as utf8 sequences, or to attempt to convert utf8
528 data back to 8 bit and "croak()" if the conversion fails.
529 Prior to Storable 2.01, no distinction was made between signed and
531 unsigned integers on storing. By default Storable prefers to store a
532 scalars string representation (if it has one) so this would only cause
533 problems when storing large unsigned integers that had never been
534 coverted to string or floating point. In other words values that had
535 been generated by integer operations such as logic ops and then not
536 used in any string or arithmetic context before storing.
537 64 bit data in perl 5.6.0 and 5.6.1
539 This section only applies to you if you have existing data written out
541 by Storable 2.02 or earlier on perl 5.6.0 or 5.6.1 on Unix or Linux
542 which has been configured with 64 bit integer support (not the default)
543 If you got a precompiled perl, rather than running Configure to build
544 your own perl from source, then it almost certainly does not affect
545 you, and you can stop reading now (unless you're curious). If you're
546 using perl on Windows it does not affect you.
547 Storable writes a file header which contains the sizes of various C
549 language types for the C compiler that built Storable (when not writing
550 in network order), and will refuse to load files written by a Storable
551 not on the same (or compatible) architecture. This check and a check
552 on machine byteorder is needed because the size of various fields in
553 the file are given by the sizes of the C language types, and so files
554 written on different architectures are incompatible. This is done for
555 increased speed. (When writing in network order, all fields are writ‐
556 ten out as standard lengths, which allows full interworking, but takes
557 longer to read and write)
558 Perl 5.6.x introduced the ability to optional configure the perl inter‐
560 preter to use C's "long long" type to allow scalars to store 64 bit
561 integers on 32 bit systems. However, due to the way the Perl configu‐
562 ration system generated the C configuration files on non-Windows plat‐
563 forms, and the way Storable generates its header, nothing in the
564 Storable file header reflected whether the perl writing was using 32 or
565 64 bit integers, despite the fact that Storable was storing some data
566 differently in the file. Hence Storable running on perl with 64 bit
567 integers will read the header from a file written by a 32 bit perl, not
568 realise that the data is actually in a subtly incompatible format, and
569 then go horribly wrong (possibly crashing) if it encountered a stored
570 integer. This is a design failure.
571 Storable has now been changed to write out and read in a file header
573 with information about the size of integers. It's impossible to detect
574 whether an old file being read in was written with 32 or 64 bit inte‐
575 gers (they have the same header) so it's impossible to automatically
576 switch to a correct backwards compatibility mode. Hence this Storable
577 defaults to the new, correct behaviour.
578 What this means is that if you have data written by Storable 1.x run‐
580 ning on perl 5.6.0 or 5.6.1 configured with 64 bit integers on Unix or
581 Linux then by default this Storable will refuse to read it, giving the
582 error Byte order is not compatible. If you have such data then you you
583 should set $Storable::interwork_56_64bit to a true value to make this
584 Storable read and write files with the old header. You should also
585 migrate your data, or any older perl you are communicating with, to
586 this current version of Storable.
587 If you don't have data written with specific configuration of perl
589 described above, then you do not and should not do anything. Don't set
590 the flag - not only will Storable on an identically configured perl
591 refuse to load them, but Storable a differently configured perl will
592 load them believing them to be correct for it, and then may well fail
593 or crash part way through reading them.
594
596 Thank you to (in chronological order):
597 Jarkko Hietaniemi <jhi@iki.fi>
599 Ulrich Pfeifer <pfeifer@charly.informatik.uni-dortmund.de>
600 Benjamin A. Holzman <bah@ecnvantage.com>
601 Andrew Ford <A.Ford@ford-mason.co.uk>
602 Gisle Aas <gisle@aas.no>
603 Jeff Gresham <gresham_jeffrey@jpmorgan.com>
604 Murray Nesbitt <murray@activestate.com>
605 Marc Lehmann <pcg@opengroup.org>
606 Justin Banks <justinb@wamnet.com>
607 Jarkko Hietaniemi <jhi@iki.fi> (AGAIN, as perl 5.7.0 Pumpkin!)
608 Salvador Ortiz Garcia <sog@msg.com.mx>
609 Dominic Dunlop <domo@computer.org>
610 Erik Haugan <erik@solbors.no>
611 for their bug reports, suggestions and contributions.
613 Benjamin Holzman contributed the tied variable support, Andrew Ford
615 contributed the canonical order for hashes, and Gisle Aas fixed a few
616 misunderstandings of mine regarding the perl internals, and optimized
617 the emission of "tags" in the output streams by simply counting the
618 objects instead of tagging them (leading to a binary incompatibility
619 for the Storable image starting at version 0.6--older images are, of
620 course, still properly understood). Murray Nesbitt made Storable
621 thread-safe. Marc Lehmann added overloading and references to tied
622 items support.
623
625 Storable was written by Raphael Manfredi <Raphael_Manfredi@pobox.com>
626 Maintenance is now done by the perl5-porters <perl5-porters@perl.org>
627 Please e-mail us with problems, bug fixes, comments and complaints,
629 although if you have complements you should send them to Raphael.
630 Please don't e-mail Raphael with problems, as he no longer works on
631 Storable, and your message will be delayed while he forwards it to us.
632
634 Clone.
635perl v5.8.8 2001-09-21 Storable(3pm)