--- CBOR-XS/XS.pm	2020/12/01 01:49:47	1.76
+++ CBOR-XS/XS.pm	2020/12/04 02:57:14	1.77
@@ -731,6 +731,11 @@
 
 Forces the value to be encoded as a (binary) string value.
 
+Example: encode a perl string as binary even though C<text_strings> is in
+effect.
+
+   CBOR::XS->new->text_strings->encode ([4, "text", CBOR::XS::bytes "bytevalue"]);
+
 =item CBOR::XS::as_bool $value
 
 Converts a Perl boolean (which can be any kind of scalar) into a CBOR
@@ -750,20 +755,29 @@
 
 Forces double-float (IEEE 754 binary64) encoding of the given value.
 
-=item, CBOR::XS::as_cbor $cbor_text
+=item CBOR::XS::as_cbor $cbor_text
 
-Bot a type cast per-se, this type cast forces the argument to eb encoded
+Not a type cast per-se, this type cast forces the argument to eb encoded
 as-is. This can be used to embed pre-encoded CBOR data.
 
 Note that no checking on the validity of the C<$cbor_text> is done - it's
 the callers responsibility to correctly encode values.
 
-=back
+=item CBOR::XS::as_map [key => value...]
 
-Example: encode a perl string as binary even though C<text_strings> is in
-effect.
+Treat the array reference as key value pairs and output a CBOR map. This
+allows you to generate CBOR maps with arbitrary key types (or, if you
+don't care about semantics, duplicate keys or prairs in a custom order),
+which is otherwise hard to do with Perl.
 
-   CBOR::XS->new->text_strings->encode ([4, "text", CBOR::XS::bytes "bytevalue"]);
+The single argument must be an array reference with an even number of
+elements.
+
+Example: encode a CBOR map with a string and an integer as keys.
+
+   encode_cbor CBOR::XS::as_map [string => "value", 5 => "value"]
+
+=back
 
 =cut
 
@@ -777,6 +791,14 @@
 
 sub CBOR::XS::as_bool    ($) { $_[0] ? $Types::Serialiser::true : $Types::Serialiser::false }
 
+sub CBOR::XS::as_map ($) {
+   ARRAY:: eq ref $_[0]
+      and $#{ $_[0] } & 1
+      or do { require Carp; Carp::croak ("CBOR::XS::as_map only acepts array references with an even number of elements, found ") };
+
+   bless [$_[0], 7, undef], CBOR::XS::Tagged::
+}
+
 =head2 OBJECT SERIALISATION
 
 This module implements both a CBOR-specific and the generic