Shell::Autobox - pipe Perl strings through shell commands

  use Shell::Autobox qw(xmllint);

  my $xml = '<foo bar="baz"><bar /><baz /></foo>';
  my $pretty = $xml->xmllint('--format');

Shell::Autobox provides an easy way to pipe Perl strings through shell commands. Commands passed as arguments to the use Shell::Autobox statement are installed as subroutines in the calling package, and that package is then registered as the handler for methods called on ordinary (i.e. non-reference) scalars.

When a method corresponding to a registered command is called on a scalar, it is passed as the command's standard input; additional arguments are passed through as a space-delimited list of options, and - if no error occurs - the command's standard output is returned. This can then be piped into other commands.

The scalar is written to a temporary file, and the name of this file is appended to the program name and the supplied options, so commands that expect their input to be supplied in some other fashion may need to be massaged.

e.g.

	$foo->bar('-input')->baz(...)

	# or

	$foo->bar('--option1', '--option2', '<')->baz(...)

The registered methods can also be called as regular functions e.g.

	use Shell::Autobox qw(cut);

	my $bar = cut("foo:bar:baz", "-d':' -f2");

None by default.

autobox, autobox::Core, Shell

chocolateboy <chocolate.boy@email.com>

Copyright (c) 2005 by chocolateboy

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.6 or, at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.

0.03