.\" Automatically generated by Pod::Man 4.11 (Pod::Simple 3.35)
.\"
.\" Standard preamble:
.\" ========================================================================
.de Sp \" Vertical space (when we can't use .PP)
.if t .sp .5v
.if n .sp
..
.de Vb \" Begin verbatim text
.ft CW
.nf
.ne \\$1
..
.de Ve \" End verbatim text
.ft R
.fi
..
.\" Set up some character translations and predefined strings.  \*(-- will
.\" give an unbreakable dash, \*(PI will give pi, \*(L" will give a left
.\" double quote, and \*(R" will give a right double quote.  \*(C+ will
.\" give a nicer C++.  Capital omega is used to do unbreakable dashes and
.\" therefore won't be available.  \*(C` and \*(C' expand to `' in nroff,
.\" nothing in troff, for use with C<>.
.tr \(*W-
.ds C+ C\v'-.1v'\h'-1p'\s-2+\h'-1p'+\s0\v'.1v'\h'-1p'
.ie n \{\
.    ds -- \(*W-
.    ds PI pi
.    if (\n(.H=4u)&(1m=24u) .ds -- \(*W\h'-12u'\(*W\h'-12u'-\" diablo 10 pitch
.    if (\n(.H=4u)&(1m=20u) .ds -- \(*W\h'-12u'\(*W\h'-8u'-\"  diablo 12 pitch
.    ds L" ""
.    ds R" ""
.    ds C` ""
.    ds C' ""
'br\}
.el\{\
.    ds -- \|\(em\|
.    ds PI \(*p
.    ds L" ``
.    ds R" ''
.    ds C`
.    ds C'
'br\}
.\"
.\" Escape single quotes in literal strings from groff's Unicode transform.
.ie \n(.g .ds Aq \(aq
.el       .ds Aq '
.\"
.\" If the F register is >0, we'll generate index entries on stderr for
.\" titles (.TH), headers (.SH), subsections (.SS), items (.Ip), and index
.\" entries marked with X<> in POD.  Of course, you'll have to process the
.\" output yourself in some meaningful fashion.
.\"
.\" Avoid warning from groff about undefined register 'F'.
.de IX
..
.nr rF 0
.if \n(.g .if rF .nr rF 1
.if (\n(rF:(\n(.g==0)) \{\
.    if \nF \{\
.        de IX
.        tm Index:\\$1\t\\n%\t"\\$2"
..
.        if !\nF==2 \{\
.            nr % 0
.            nr F 2
.        \}
.    \}
.\}
.rr rF
.\" ========================================================================
.\"
.IX Title "Sereal 3pm"
.TH Sereal 3pm "2020-08-03" "perl v5.30.3" "User Contributed Perl Documentation"
.\" For nroff, turn off justification.  Always turn off hyphenation; it makes
.\" way too many mistakes in technical documents.
.if n .ad l
.nh
.SH "NAME"
Sereal \- Fast, compact, powerful binary (de\-)serialization
.SH "SYNOPSIS"
.IX Header "SYNOPSIS"
.Vb 4
\&    use Sereal qw(
\&        get_sereal_decoder
\&        get_sereal_encoder
\&        clear_sereal_object_cache
\&
\&        encode_sereal
\&        decode_sereal
\&
\&        read_sereal
\&        read_sereal_file
\&        write_sereal
\&        write_sereal_file
\&
\&        looks_like_sereal
\&        scalar_looks_like_sereal
\&
\&        sereal_encode_with_object
\&        sereal_decode_with_object
\&        decode_sereal_with_header_data
\&
\&        sereal_decode_with_header_with_object
\&        sereal_decode_only_header_with_object
\&        sereal_decode_only_header_with_offset_with_object
\&        sereal_decode_with_header_and_offset_with_object
\&        sereal_decode_with_offset_with_object
\&
\&        SRL_UNCOMPRESSED
\&        SRL_SNAPPY
\&        SRL_ZLIB
\&        SRL_ZSTD
\&    );
\&    # Note: For performance reasons, you should prefer the OO interface,
\&    #       or sereal_(en|de)code_with_object over the stateless
\&    #       encode_sereal/decode_sereal functions.
\&    #       See the Sereal::Performance documentation for details.
.Ve
.SH "DESCRIPTION"
.IX Header "DESCRIPTION"
\&\fISereal\fR is an efficient, compact-output, binary and feature-rich
serialization protocol. The Perl encoder is implemented as the
Sereal::Encoder module, the Perl decoder correspondingly as
Sereal::Decoder. They are distributed separately to allow for
safe upgrading without downtime. (Hint: Upgrade the decoder everywhere
first, then the encoder.)
.PP
This \f(CW\*(C`Sereal\*(C'\fR module is a very thin wrapper around both \f(CW\*(C`Sereal::Encoder\*(C'\fR
and \f(CW\*(C`Sereal::Decoder\*(C'\fR. It depends on both and loads both. So if you have
a user of both encoder and decoder, it is enough to depend on a particular
version of \f(CW\*(C`Sereal\*(C'\fR and you'll get the most recent released versions
of \f(CW\*(C`Sereal::Encoder\*(C'\fR and \f(CW\*(C`Sereal::Decoder\*(C'\fR whose version is smaller than
or equal to the version of \f(CW\*(C`Sereal\*(C'\fR you depend on.
.PP
The protocol specification and many other bits of documentation
can be found in the github repository. Right now, the specification is at
<https://github.com/Sereal/Sereal/blob/master/sereal_spec.pod>,
there is a discussion of the design objectives in
<https://github.com/Sereal/Sereal/blob/master/README.pod>, and the output
of our benchmarks can be seen at
<https://github.com/Sereal/Sereal/wiki/Sereal\-Comparison\-Graphs>.
.SS "\s-1EXPORTED FUNCTIONS\s0"
.IX Subsection "EXPORTED FUNCTIONS"
It is recommended to use the object-oriented interface of
\&\f(CW\*(C`Sereal::Encoder\*(C'\fR and \f(CW\*(C`Sereal::Decoder\*(C'\fR if you care about
performance. For detailed performance considerations,
see Sereal::Performance.
.PP
You can optionally import five functions from \f(CW\*(C`Sereal\*(C'\fR.
\&\f(CW\*(C`encode_sereal\*(C'\fR is the same function as Sereal::Encoder's
\&\f(CW\*(C`encode_sereal\*(C'\fR function. \f(CW\*(C`decode_sereal\*(C'\fR and \f(CW\*(C`looks_like_sereal\*(C'\fR
are the same as Sereal::Decoder's functions of the same names.
Finally, you can import the advanced functional interface
\&\f(CW\*(C`sereal_encode_with_object\*(C'\fR and \f(CW\*(C`sereal_decode_with_object\*(C'\fR.
Again, see Sereal::Performance for information about those.
.PP
After loading the \f(CW\*(C`Sereal\*(C'\fR module, both \f(CW\*(C`Sereal::Encoder\*(C'\fR and
\&\f(CW\*(C`Sereal::Decoder\*(C'\fR are guaranteed to be loaded, so you can use
their object-oriented interface.
.SS "get_sereal_encoder($OPTSHASH)"
.IX Subsection "get_sereal_encoder($OPTSHASH)"
Returns a Sereal::Encoder with the given options. This encoder will be shared by other calls
to this function.
.SS "get_sereal_decoder($OPTSHASH)"
.IX Subsection "get_sereal_decoder($OPTSHASH)"
Returns a Sereal::Decoder with the given options. This encoder will be shared by other calls
to this function.
.SS "clear_sereal_object_cache"
.IX Subsection "clear_sereal_object_cache"
Clears cache of objects created via \fBget_sereal_encoder()\fR and \fBget_sereal_decoder()\fR. Returns
the number of objects that were removed from the cache (the sum of both types).
.SS "write_sereal_file($FILENAME,$STRUCT,$APPEND,$OPTS)"
.IX Subsection "write_sereal_file($FILENAME,$STRUCT,$APPEND,$OPTS)"
Write a sereal packet to \f(CW$FILENAME\fR. See \fBSereal::Encoder::encode_to_file()\fR.
.SS "write_sereal($FILENAME,$STRUCT,$APPEND,$OPTS)"
.IX Subsection "write_sereal($FILENAME,$STRUCT,$APPEND,$OPTS)"
alias for \fBwrite_sereal_file()\fR
.SS "read_sereal_file($FILENAME,$OPTS,$ROOT)"
.IX Subsection "read_sereal_file($FILENAME,$OPTS,$ROOT)"
Read a sereal packet from a file. See \fBSereal::Decoder::decode_from_file()\fR.
.SS "read_sereal($FILENAME,$OPTS,$ROOT)"
.IX Subsection "read_sereal($FILENAME,$OPTS,$ROOT)"
alias for \fBread_sereal_file()\fR
.SH "BUGS, CONTACT AND SUPPORT"
.IX Header "BUGS, CONTACT AND SUPPORT"
For reporting bugs, please use the github bug tracker at
<http://github.com/Sereal/Sereal/issues>.
.PP
For support and discussion of Sereal, there are two Google Groups:
.PP
Announcements around Sereal (extremely low volume):
<https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/sereal\-announce>
.PP
Sereal development list:
<https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/sereal\-dev>
.SH "AUTHOR"
.IX Header "AUTHOR"
Steffen Mueller <smueller@cpan.org>
.SH "ACKNOWLEDGMENT"
.IX Header "ACKNOWLEDGMENT"
This module was originally developed for Booking.com.
With approval from Booking.com, this module was generalized
and published on \s-1CPAN,\s0 for which the authors would like to express
their gratitude.
.SH "LICENSE"
.IX Header "LICENSE"
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the same terms as Perl itself.
.SH "COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE"
.IX Header "COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE"
Copyright (C) 2012, 2013, 2014 by Steffen Mueller