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PERLDOC(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLDOC(1)
NAME
perldoc - Look up Perl documentation in Pod format.
SYNOPSIS
perldoc [-h] [-v] [-t] [-u] [-m] [-l] [-F] [-i] [-V] [-T] [-r] [-ddes-
tination_file] [-oformatname] [-MFormatterClassName] [-wformatterop-
tion:value] [-nnroff-replacement] [-X] PageName|ModuleName|ProgramName
perldoc -f BuiltinFunction
perldoc -q FAQ Keyword
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 dis-
plays 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.
-v Describes search for the item in detail (verbosely).
-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 documen-
tation. This may be useful if the docs 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"
-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-format-
ting class for the output format that you 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::Perl-
doc::ToLatex Pod::Perldoc::ToLATEX Pod::Simple::LaTeX Pod::Sim-
ple::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 format-
ting the pod. The class must must at least provide a
"parse_from_file" method. For example: "perldoc -MPod::Perl-
doc::ToChecker".
You can specify several classes to try by joining them with com-
mas or semicolons, as in "-MTk::SuperPod;Tk::Pod".
-w option:value or -w option
This specifies an option to call the formatter with. For exam-
ple, "-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 trou-
ble.)
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.
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".
-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::Perl-
doc::ToMan" or the like.
"perldoc" also searches directories specified by the "PERL5LIB" (or
"PERLLIB" if "PERL5LIB" is not defined) and "PATH" environment vari-
ables. (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 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.
AUTHOR
Current maintainer: Sean M. Burke,
Past contributors are: Kenneth Albanowski , Andy
Dougherty , and many others.
perl v5.8.5 2003-10-23 PERLDOC(1)
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