man String::Dirify (3): Convert a string into a directory name

Synopsis

        use String::Dirify;
        my($dir_1) = String::Dirify -> dirify('frobnitz');

Or:

        use String::Dirify ':all';
        my($dir_2) = dirify('bar baz');

Or even:

        use String::Dirify;
        my($sd)    = String::Dirify -> new();
        my($dir_3) = $sd -> dirify('!Q@W#E$R%T^Y');

Description

"String::Dirify" is a pure Perl module.

This module allows you to convert a string (possibly containing high ASCII characters, and even HTML) into another, lower-cased, string which can be used as a directory name.

For usage, see the Synopsis.

This code is derived from similar code in Movable Type.

Method: dirify($string [, $separator])

Returns a string, which can be used as a directory name.

The default separator is '_'.

Each run of spaces in the string is replaced by this separator.

Algorithm

1: Each high ASCII character is replaced by its normal equivalent
2: The string is converted to lower case
3: Any HTML (including HTML entities) in the string is removed
4: Any characters which are not (Perl) words, spaces or hyphens, are removed
5: Runs of spaces are converted to the separator character: For more details about this character, see the discussion of the dirify() method (above).

Melody 'v' Movable Type

See http://openmelody.org for details.

Backwards Compatibility with Movable Type

Unfortunately, Movable Type's usage of dirify() allows a fake separator - '1' - to be used for the second parameter in the call to dirify().

The '1' triggered usage of '_' as the separator, rather than the '1' provided.

This 'feature' has been preserved in "String::Dirify", but is discouraged. Instead, simply drop the second parameter and let the code default to '_'.

Distributions

This module is available as a Unix-style distro (*.tgz).

See http://savage.net.au/Perl-modules.html for details.

Authors

"String::Dirify" started out as part of Movable Type's code.

Then, Mark Stosberg cut down the original code to provide just the English/ISO/ASCII features.

Lastly, the code was cleaned up, tests added, and all packaged, by Ron Savage <[email protected]> in 2009.

Home page: http://savage.net.au/index.html