freeze#

Serialise a referenced Perl structure into an opaque byte string using the host’s native byte order.

Synopsis#

use Storable qw(freeze thaw);
my $bytes = freeze(\%config);
my $copy  = thaw($bytes);

What you get back#

A single scalar holding the binary image of the structure. The bytes are opaque — treat them as a blob, not text. They can be stored, transmitted, or passed straight back to thaw. Native byte order keeps the serialisation fast but the result is only portable between machines with the same endianness and integer width; for cross-architecture transport use nfreeze.

Examples#

Freeze and immediately thaw a hash reference:

my $bytes = freeze({ host => "db1", port => 5432 });
my $cfg   = thaw($bytes);
print $cfg->{host};             # db1

Freeze a nested structure with shared references:

my $shared = [1, 2, 3];
my $bytes  = freeze({ a => $shared, b => $shared });
my $h      = thaw($bytes);
$h->{a}[0] = 99;
print $h->{b}[0];               # 99 — sharing preserved

Round-trip a blessed object:

my $obj   = bless { id => 42 }, "Widget";
my $bytes = freeze(\$obj);
my $back  = ${ thaw($bytes) };  # same class, same contents

Edge cases#

Argument must be a reference. Passing a plain scalar croaks with Not a reference.
Circular references are preserved; the reader rebuilds the same cycle.
Weak references survive the round trip as weak references.

Differences from upstream#

The on-disk layout differs from upstream’s format. Byte strings produced by this freeze can only be thawed by pperl’s Storable, not by perl5’s. The reverse also holds. Pinned by t/81-xs-native/Storable/010-freeze-thaw.t.