Penguin
Recent Changes
Annotated edit history of perldoc(1) version 2, including all changes. View license author blame.
Rev Author # Line
1 perry 1 PERLDOC
2 !!!PERLDOC
3 NAME
4 SYNOPSIS
5 DESCRIPTION
6 OPTIONS
7 ENVIRONMENT
8 VERSION
9 AUTHOR
10 ----
11 !!NAME
12
13
14 perldoc - Look up Perl documentation in pod format.
15 !!SYNOPSIS
16
17
18 __perldoc__ [[__-h__] [[__-v__] [[__-t__]
19 [[__-u__] [[__-m__] [[__-l__] [[__-F__] [[__-X__]
2 perry 20 !PageNameModuleNameProgramName
1 perry 21
22
2 perry 23 __perldoc -f__ !BuiltinFunction
1 perry 24
25
26 __perldoc -q__ FAQ Keyword
27 !!DESCRIPTION
28
29
30 ''perldoc'' looks up a piece of documentation in .pod
31 format that is embedded in the perl installation tree or in
32 a perl script, and displays it via pod2man nroff -man
33 $PAGER. (In addition, if running under
34 HP-UX , col -x will be used.) This
35 is primarily used for the documentation for the perl library
36 modules.
37
38
39 Your system may also have man pages installed for those
40 modules, in which case you can probably just use the
41 man(1) command.
42 !!OPTIONS
43
44
45 __-h__ help
46
47
48 Prints out a brief help message.
49
50
51 __-v__ verbose
52
53
54 Describes search for the item in detail.
55
56
57 __-t__ text output
58
59
60 Display docs using plain text converter, instead of nroff.
61 This may be faster, but it won't look as nice.
62
63
64 __-u__ unformatted
65
66
67 Find docs only; skip reformatting by pod2*
68
69
70 __-m__ module
71
72
73 Display the entire module: both code and unformatted pod
74 documentation. This may be useful if the docs don't explain
75 a function in the detail you need, and you'd like to inspect
76 the code directly; perldoc will find the file for you and
77 simply hand it off for display.
78
79
80 __-l__ file name only
81
82
83 Display the file name of the module found.
84
85
86 __-F__ file names
87
88
89 Consider arguments as file names, no search in directories
90 will be performed.
91
92
93 __-f__ perlfunc
94
95
96 The __-f__ option followed by the name of a perl built in
97 function will extract the documentation of this function
98 from perlfunc.
99
100
101 __-q__ perlfaq
102
103
104 The __-q__ option takes a regular expression as an
105 argument. It will search the question headings in
106 perlfaq[[1-9] and print the entries matching the regular
107 expression.
108
109
110 __-X__ use an index if present
111
112
113 The __-X__ option looks for a entry whose basename
114 matches the name given on the command line in the file
115 $Config{archlib}/pod.idx. The pod.idx file should
116 contain fully qualified filenames, one per
117 line.
118
119
120 __-U__ run insecurely
121
122
123 Because __perldoc__ does not run properly tainted, and is
124 known to have security issues, it will not normally execute
125 as the superuser. If you use the __-U__ flag, it will do
126 so, but only after setting the effective and real IDs to
127 nobody's or nouser's account, or -2 if unavailable. If it
128 cannot relinguish its privileges, it will not
129 run.
130
131
2 perry 132 __!PageNameModuleNameProgramName__
1 perry 133
134
135 The item you want to look up. Nested modules (such as
136 File::Basename) are specified either as
137 File::Basename or File/Basename. You may
138 also give a descriptive name of a page, such as
139 perlfunc. You may also give a partial or wrong-case
140 name, such as ``basename'' for ``File::Basename'', but this
141 will be slower, if there is more then one page with the same
142 partial name, you will only get the first one.
143 !!ENVIRONMENT
144
145
146 Any switches in the PERLDOC environment variable
147 will be used before the command line arguments.
148 perldoc also searches directories specified by the
149 PERL5LIB (or PERLLIB if PERL5LIB
150 is not defined) and PATH environment variables.
151 (The latter is so that embedded pods for executables, such
152 as perldoc itself, are available.) perldoc
153 will use, in order of preference, the pager defined in
154 PERLDOC_PAGER, MANPAGER, or PAGER
155 before trying to find a pager on its own. (MANPAGER
156 is not used if perldoc was told to display plain
157 text or unformatted pod.)
158
159
160 One useful value for PERLDOC_PAGER is less -+C
161 -E.
162 !!VERSION
163
164
165 This is perldoc v2.03.
166 !!AUTHOR
167
168
169 Kenneth Albanowski
170
171
172 Minor updates by Andy Dougherty
173 ----
This page is a man page (or other imported legacy content). We are unable to automatically determine the license status of this page.