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.