I've got a change to P4Ruby that I'm considering to run by you. I'd like to know if this is something that people want/need or whether I should leave well alone.

The idea is that all the form parsing methods would return a P4::Spec object instead of a Hash - though you'll notice little difference since a P4::Spec object is a subclass of Hash. The advantage of a P4::Spec object is that it:

(a) ensures that you only set valid fields (b) provides you with accessor methods for all valid fields (c) the accessor methods are all prefixed with an '_' to avoid colliding with methods from Hash itself (Hash#update was the one that bit me). The underscores are a bit Pythonesque, but seemed like a reasonable choice. I'm open to suggestions though. (d) the accessor methods are all lowercase for consistency - regardless of the case of the field in the form.

Usage is something like this:

p4 = P4.new p4.parse_forms p4.connect

client = p4.fetch_client client._description = "My new client description" client._root = "/tmp"

client._view.each do |mapping| puts( mapping ) end

Since these are still hashes, they can also be supplied as input to update Perforce:

p4.save_client( client )

Feedback appreciated.

Tony