IO::MultiHandle - Operate on multiple file handles as one

[jdporter]

This module encapsulates any number of filehandles in a kind of "meta-filehandle". Any operations you perform on the meta-filehandle are delegated to all of the contained handles. This may be similar to the IO::Tee module.

This solution was developed in response to Printing to multiple file handles with one request.

Updated in response to helpful comments from jmcnamara and Aristotle.

=head1 NAME

IO::MultiHandle - Encapsulate multiple handles in one.

=head1 SYNOPSIS

    use IO::MultiHandle;

    my $logfh = IO::File->new( "> $outfile" ) or die "write $outfile: 
+$!";

    # create a multi-handle which will write to both
    # STDERR and the filehandle created above:
    my $mfh = new IO::MultiHandle *STDERR, $logfh;

    print $mfh "A line of output.\n";

=cut

package Tie::MultiHandle; # do not use directly.
  use IO::Handle;

  sub TIEHANDLE
  {
    my $pkg = shift;
    bless [ @_ ], $pkg
  }

  sub AUTOLOAD
  {
    my( $self, @args ) = @_;
    our( $AUTOLOAD );
    $AUTOLOAD =~ s/.*::(.*)/\L$1/;
    for my $fh ( @$self ) { $fh->$AUTOLOAD( @args ); }
  }

  sub DESTROY
  {
  }


package IO::MultiHandle;
  use Symbol;

  # takes a list of handles
  sub new
  {
    my $pkg = shift;
    my $self = gensym;
    tie *$self, Tie::MultiHandle::, @_;
    bless $self, $pkg
  }

[Aristotle]

Did you test this? The following won't work: $fh->$AUTOLOAD( @args ) for my $fh @$self; Perl hasn't seen the my when it sees the first mention of $fh so that one refers to the global variable of that name. Either declare the variable on a line by itself or use $_. $_->$AUTOLOAD(@args) for @$self;

Makeshifts last the longest.

[jmcnamara]

That is a nice idea and a nice implementation. However, it has some problems.

The my $fh won't work with the postfix for. You would have to do something like this instead:      $_->$AUTOLOAD(@args) for @$self;

Also, the following won't work because MultiHandle->new() doesn't return a GLOB:     print $mfh "A line of output.\n";

The following does work but it isn't as pretty:     $mfh->print("A line of output.\n");

--
John.