new¶

Instantiate a new "Number::RecordLocator" object. Right now, we don't actually store any object-specific data, but in the future, we might.

init¶

Initializes our integer to character and character to integer mapping tables.

encode INTEGER¶

Takes an integer. Returns a Record Locator string.

decode STRING¶

Takes a record locator string and returns an integer. If you pass in a string containing an invalid character, it returns undef.

canonicalize STRING¶

To compare a Record Locator string with another you can do:

  print "ALWAYS TRUE\n" if $generator->decode("B0") == $generator->decode("PO");

However, this method provides an alternative:

  my $rl_string = $generator->encode(725);
  print "ALWAYS TRUE\n" if $generator->canonicalize("b0") eq $rl_string;
  print "ALWAYS TRUE\n" if $generator->canonicalize("BO") eq $rl_string;
  print "ALWAYS TRUE\n" if $generator->canonicalize("P0") eq $rl_string;
  print "ALWAYS TRUE\n" if $generator->canonicalize("po") eq $rl_string;

This is primarily useful if you store the record locator rather than just the original integer and don't want to have to decode your strings to do comparisons.

Takes a general Record Locator string and returns one with character mappings listed in "DESCRIPTION" applied to it. This allows string comparisons to work. This returns "undef" if a non-alphanumeric character is found in the string.