IO::Seekable(3pm)					 Perl Programmers Reference Guide					 IO::Seekable(3pm)

NAME

       IO::Seekable - supply seek based methods for I/O objects

SYNOPSIS

	   use IO::Seekable;
	   package IO::Something;
	   @ISA = qw(IO::Seekable);

DESCRIPTION

       "IO::Seekable" does not have a constructor of its own as it is intended to be inherited by other "IO::Handle" based objects. It provides
       methods which allow seeking of the file descriptors.

       $io->getpos
	   Returns an opaque value that represents the current position of the IO::File, or "undef" if this is not possible (eg an unseekable
	   stream such as a terminal, pipe or socket). If the fgetpos() function is available in your C library it is used to implements getpos,
	   else perl emulates getpos using C's ftell() function.

       $io->setpos
	   Uses the value of a previous getpos call to return to a previously visited position. Returns "0 but true" on success, "undef" on fail-
	   ure.

       See perlfunc for complete descriptions of each of the following supported "IO::Seekable" methods, which are just front ends for the corre-
       sponding built-in functions:

       $io->seek ( POS, WHENCE )
	   Seek the IO::File to position POS, relative to WHENCE:

	   WHENCE=0 (SEEK_SET)
		   POS is absolute position. (Seek relative to the start of the file)

	   WHENCE=1 (SEEK_CUR)
		   POS is an offset from the current position. (Seek relative to current)

	   WHENCE=2 (SEEK_END)
		   POS is an offset from the end of the file. (Seek relative to end)

	   The SEEK_* constants can be imported from the "Fcntl" module if you don't wish to use the numbers 0 1 or 2 in your code.

	   Returns 1 upon success, 0 otherwise.

       $io->sysseek( POS, WHENCE )
	   Similar to $io->seek, but sets the IO::File's position using the system call lseek(2) directly, so will confuse most perl IO operators
	   except sysread and syswrite (see perlfunc for full details)

	   Returns the new position, or "undef" on failure.  A position of zero is returned as the string "0 but true"

       $io->tell
	   Returns the IO::File's current position, or -1 on error.

SEE ALSO

       perlfunc, "I/O Operators" in perlop, IO::Handle IO::File

HISTORY

       Derived from FileHandle.pm by Graham Barr <gbarr@pobox.com>

perl v5.8.0							    2002-06-01							 IO::Seekable(3pm)