perldoc
(1)
Name
perldoc - Look up Perl documentation in Pod format.
Synopsis
perldoc [-h] [-D] [-t] [-u] [-m] [-l] [-F] [-i] [-V] [-T]
[-r] [-ddestination_file] [-oformatname]
[-MFormatterClassName] [-wformatteroption:value] [-nnroff-
replacement] [-X] [-L language_code]
PageName|ModuleName|ProgramName
perldoc -f BuiltinFunction
perldoc -L it -f BuiltinFunction
perldoc -q FAQ Keyword
perldoc -L fr -q FAQ Keyword
perldoc -v PerlVariable
See below for more description of the switches.
Description
Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLDOC(1)
NAME
perldoc - Look up Perl documentation in Pod format.
SYNOPSIS
perldoc [-h] [-D] [-t] [-u] [-m] [-l] [-F] [-i] [-V] [-T]
[-r] [-ddestination_file] [-oformatname]
[-MFormatterClassName] [-wformatteroption:value] [-nnroff-
replacement] [-X] [-L language_code]
PageName|ModuleName|ProgramName
perldoc -f BuiltinFunction
perldoc -L it -f BuiltinFunction
perldoc -q FAQ Keyword
perldoc -L fr -q FAQ Keyword
perldoc -v PerlVariable
See below for more description of the switches.
DESCRIPTION
perldoc looks up a piece of documentation in .pod format
that is embedded in the perl installation tree or in a perl
script, and displays it via "pod2man | nroff -man | $PAGER".
(In addition, if running under HP-UX, "col -x" will be
used.) This is primarily used for the documentation for the
perl library modules.
Your system may also have man pages installed for those
modules, in which case you can probably just use the man(1)
command.
If you are looking for a table of contents to the Perl
library modules documentation, see the perltoc page.
OPTIONS
-h Prints out a brief help message.
-D Describes search for the item in detail.
-t Display docs using plain text converter, instead of
nroff. This may be faster, but it probably won't look
as nice.
-u Skip the real Pod formatting, and just show the raw Pod
source (Unformatted)
-m module
Display the entire module: both code and unformatted
pod documentation. This may be useful if the docs
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don't explain a function in the detail you need, and
you'd like to inspect the code directly; perldoc will
find the file for you and simply hand it off for
display.
-l Display only the file name of the module found.
-F Consider arguments as file names; no search in
directories will be performed.
-f perlfunc
The -f option followed by the name of a perl built in
function will extract the documentation of this
function from perlfunc.
Example:
perldoc -f sprintf
-q perlfaq-search-regexp
The -q option takes a regular expression as an
argument. It will search the question headings in
perlfaq[1-9] and print the entries matching the regular
expression.
Example:
perldoc -q shuffle
-v perlvar
The -v option followed by the name of a Perl predefined
variable will extract the documentation of this
variable from perlvar.
Examples:
perldoc -v '$"'
perldoc -v @+
perldoc -v DATA
-T This specifies that the output is not to be sent to a
pager, but is to be sent right to STDOUT.
-d destination-filename
This specifies that the output is to be sent neither to
a pager nor to STDOUT, but is to be saved to the
specified filename. Example: "perldoc -oLaTeX
-dtextwrapdocs.tex Text::Wrap"
-o output-formatname
This specifies that you want Perldoc to try using a
Pod-formatting class for the output format that you
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specify. For example: "-oman". This is actually just
a wrapper around the "-M" switch; using "-oformatname"
just looks for a loadable class by adding that format
name (with different capitalizations) to the end of
different classname prefixes.
For example, "-oLaTeX" currently tries all of the
following classes: Pod::Perldoc::ToLaTeX
Pod::Perldoc::Tolatex Pod::Perldoc::ToLatex
Pod::Perldoc::ToLATEX Pod::Simple::LaTeX
Pod::Simple::latex Pod::Simple::Latex
Pod::Simple::LATEX Pod::LaTeX Pod::latex Pod::Latex
Pod::LATEX.
-M module-name
This specifies the module that you want to try using
for formatting the pod. The class must at least
provide a "parse_from_file" method. For example:
"perldoc -MPod::Perldoc::ToChecker".
You can specify several classes to try by joining them
with commas or semicolons, as in
"-MTk::SuperPod;Tk::Pod".
-w option:value or -w option
This specifies an option to call the formatter with.
For example, "-w textsize:15" will call
"$formatter->textsize(15)" on the formatter object
before it is used to format the object. For this to be
valid, the formatter class must provide such a method,
and the value you pass should be valid. (So if
"textsize" expects an integer, and you do "-w
textsize:big", expect trouble.)
You can use "-w optionname" (without a value) as
shorthand for "-w optionname:TRUE". This is presumably
useful in cases of on/off features like: "-w
page_numbering".
You can use a "=" instead of the ":", as in: "-w
textsize=15". This might be more (or less) convenient,
depending on what shell you use.
-X Use an index if it is present. The -X option looks for
an entry whose basename matches the name given on the
command line in the file "$Config{archlib}/pod.idx".
The pod.idx file should contain fully qualified
filenames, one per line.
-L language_code
This allows to specify the language code for desired
language translation. If "POD2::<language_code>"
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package doesn't exist (or isn't installed in your
system), the switch will be ignored. All available
translation packages should be found under the "POD2::"
namespace. See POD2::IT (or POD2::FR) in order to see
how to create and integrate new localized "POD2::*" pod
documentation packages in Pod::Perldoc.
PageName|ModuleName|ProgramName
The item you want to look up. Nested modules (such as
"File::Basename") are specified either as
"File::Basename" or "File/Basename". You may also give
a descriptive name of a page, such as "perlfunc".
For simple names like 'foo', when the normal search
fails to find a matching page, a search with the "perl"
prefix is tried as well. So "perldoc intro" is enough
to find/render "perlintro.pod".
-n some-formatter
Specify replacement for nroff
-r Recursive search.
-i Ignore case.
-V Displays the version of perldoc you're running.
SECURITY
Because perldoc does not run properly tainted, and is known
to have security issues, when run as the superuser it will
attempt to drop privileges by setting the effective and real
IDs to nobody's or nouser's account, or -2 if unavailable.
If it cannot relinquish its privileges, it will not run.
ENVIRONMENT
Any switches in the "PERLDOC" environment variable will be
used before the command line arguments.
Useful values for "PERLDOC" include "-oman", "-otext",
"-otk", "-ortf", "-oxml", and so on, depending on what
modules you have on hand; or exactly specify the formatter
class with "-MPod::Perldoc::ToMan" or the like.
"perldoc" also searches directories specified by the
"PERL5LIB" (or "PERLLIB" if "PERL5LIB" is not defined) and
"PATH" environment variables. (The latter is so that
embedded pods for executables, such as "perldoc" itself, are
available.)
"perldoc" will use, in order of preference, the pager
defined in "PERLDOC_PAGER", "MANPAGER", or "PAGER" before
trying to find a pager on its own. ("MANPAGER" is not used
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if "perldoc" was told to display plain text or unformatted
pod.)
One useful value for "PERLDOC_PAGER" is "less -+C -E".
Having PERLDOCDEBUG set to a positive integer will make
perldoc emit even more descriptive output than the "-v"
switch does; the higher the number, the more it emits.
CHANGES
Up to 3.14_05, the switch -v was used to produce verbose
messages of perldoc operation, which is now enabled by -D.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following
attributes:
+---------------+------------------+
|ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+---------------+------------------+
|Availability | runtime/perl-512 |
+---------------+------------------+
|Stability | Uncommitted |
+---------------+------------------+
SEE ALSO
perlpod, Pod::Perldoc
AUTHOR
Current maintainer: Adriano R. Ferreira <ferreira@cpan.org>
Past contributors are: Sean M. Burke <sburke@cpan.org>,
Kenneth Albanowski <kjahds@kjahds.com>, Andy Dougherty
<doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu>, and many others.
NOTES
This software was built from source available at
https://java.net/projects/solaris-userland. The original
community source was downloaded from
http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0/perl-5.12.5.tar.bz2
Further information about this software can be found on the
open source community website at http://www.perl.org/.
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