NAME

       PPI::Document::Normalized - A normalized Perl Document

DESCRIPTION

       A "Normalized Document" object is the result of the normalization process contained in the
       PPI::Normal class. See the documentation for PPI::Normal for more information.

       The object contains a version stamp and function list for the version of PPI::Normal used
       to create it, and a processed and delinked PPI::Document object.

       Typically, the Document object will have been mangled by the normalization process in a
       way that would make it fatal to try to actually DO anything with it.

       Put simply, never use the Document object after normalization.  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

       The object is designed the way it is to provide a bias towards false negatives. A
       comparison between two ::Normalized object will only return true if they were produced by
       the same version of PPI::Normal, with the same set of normalization functions (in the same
       order).

       You may get false negatives if you are caching objects across an upgrade.

       Please note that this is done for security purposes, as there are many cases in which low
       layer normalization is likely to be done as part of a code security process, and false
       positives could be highly dangerous.

METHODS

   new
       The "new" method is intended for use only by the PPI::Normal class, and to get
       ::Normalized objects, you are highly recommended to use either that module, or the
       "normalized" method of the PPI::Document object itself.

   version
       The "version" accessor returns the PPI::Normal version used to create the object.

   functions
       The "functions" accessor returns a reference to an array of the normalization functions
       (in order) that were called when creating the object.

   equal $Normalized
       The "equal" method is the primary comparison method, taking another
       PPI::Document::Normalized object, and checking for equivalence to it.

       The "==" operator is also overload to this method, so that you can do something like the
       following:

         my $first  = PPI::Document->load('first.pl');
         my $second = PPI::Document->load('second.pl');

         if ( $first->normalized == $second->normalized ) {
               print "The two documents are equivalent";
         }

       Returns true if the normalized documents are equivalent, false if not, or "undef" if there
       is an error.

SUPPORT

       See the support section in the main module.

AUTHOR

       Adam Kennedy <adamk@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright 2005 - 2011 Adam Kennedy.

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
       terms as Perl itself.

       The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this module.