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.\" ========================================================================
.\"
.IX Title "Number::RecordLocator 3pm"
.TH Number::RecordLocator 3pm "2009-08-13" "perl v5.10.0" "User Contributed Perl Documentation"
.\" For nroff, turn off justification.  Always turn off hyphenation; it makes
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.SH "NAME"
Number::RecordLocator \- Encodes integers into a short and easy to read and pronounce "locator string"
.SH "SYNOPSIS"
.IX Header "SYNOPSIS"
.Vb 1
\&    use Number::RecordLocator;
\&
\&    my $generator = Number::RecordLocator\->new();
\&    my $string = $generator\->encode("123456");
\&
\&    # $string = "5RL2";
\&
\&    my $number = $generator\->decode($string);
\&  
\&    # $number = "123456";
.Ve
.SH "DESCRIPTION"
.IX Header "DESCRIPTION"
\&\f(CW\*(C`Number::RecordLocator\*(C'\fR encodes integers into a 32 character \*(L"alphabet\*(R" 
designed to be short and easy to read and pronounce.  The encoding maps:
.PP
.Vb 4
\&    0 to O
\&    1 to I
\&    S to F 
\&    B to P
.Ve
.PP
With a 32 bit encoding, you can map 33.5 million unique ids into a 5 character
code.
.PP
This certainly isn't an exact science and I'm not yet 100% sure of the encoding.
Feedback is much appreciated.
.SS "new"
.IX Subsection "new"
Instantiate a new \f(CW\*(C`Number::RecordLocator\*(C'\fR object. Right now, we don't
actually store any object-specific data, but in the future, we might.
.SS "init"
.IX Subsection "init"
Initializes our integer to character and character to integer mapping tables.
.SS "encode \s-1INTEGER\s0"
.IX Subsection "encode INTEGER"
Takes an integer. Returns a Record Locator string.
.SS "decode \s-1STRING\s0"
.IX Subsection "decode STRING"
Takes a record locator string and returns an integer. If you pass in 
a string containing an invalid character, it returns undef.
.SS "canonicalize \s-1STRING\s0"
.IX Subsection "canonicalize STRING"
To compare a Record Locator string with another you can do:
.PP
.Vb 1
\&  print "ALWAYS TRUE\en" if $generator\->decode("B0") == $generator\->decode("PO");
.Ve
.PP
However, this method provides an alternative:
.PP
.Vb 5
\&  my $rl_string = $generator\->encode(725);
\&  print "ALWAYS TRUE\en" if $generator\->canonicalize("b0") eq $rl_string;
\&  print "ALWAYS TRUE\en" if $generator\->canonicalize("BO") eq $rl_string;
\&  print "ALWAYS TRUE\en" if $generator\->canonicalize("P0") eq $rl_string;
\&  print "ALWAYS TRUE\en" if $generator\->canonicalize("po") eq $rl_string;
.Ve
.PP
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.
.PP
Takes a general Record Locator string and returns one with character mappings
listed in \*(L"\s-1DESCRIPTION\s0\*(R" applied to it. This allows string comparisons to work.
This returns \f(CW\*(C`undef\*(C'\fR if a non-alphanumeric character is found in the string.
.SH "BUGS AND LIMITATIONS"
.IX Header "BUGS AND LIMITATIONS"
No bugs have been reported.
.PP
Please report any bugs or feature requests to
\&\f(CW\*(C`bug\-number\-recordlocator@rt.cpan.org\*(C'\fR, or through the web interface at
<http://rt.cpan.org>.
.SH "AUTHOR"
.IX Header "AUTHOR"
Jesse Vincent  \f(CW\*(C`<jesse@bestpractical.com>\*(C'\fR
.SH "LICENCE AND COPYRIGHT"
.IX Header "LICENCE AND COPYRIGHT"
Copyright (c) 2006, Best Practical Solutions, \s-1LLC\s0.  All rights reserved.
.PP
This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. See perlartistic.