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PERLRUN !!!PERLRUN NAME SYNOPSIS DESCRIPTION ENVIRONMENT ---- !!NAME perlrun - how to execute the Perl interpreter !!SYNOPSIS __perl__ [[ __-CsTuUWX__ ] [[ __-hv__ ] [[ __-V__[[:''configvar''] ] [[ __-cw__ ] [[ __-d__[[:''debugger''] ] [[ __-D__[[''number/list''] ] [[ __-pna__ ] [[ __-F__''pattern'' ] [[ __-l__[[''octal''] ] [[ __-0__[[''octal''] ] [[ __-I__''dir'' ] [[ __-m__[[__-__]''module'' ] [[ __-M__[[__-__]'''module...''' ] [[ __-P__ ] [[ __-S__ ] [[ __-x__[[''dir''] ] [[ __-i__[[''extension''] ] [[ __-e__ '''command''' ] [[ __--__ ] [[ ''programfile'' ] [[ ''argument'' ]... !!DESCRIPTION The normal way to run a Perl program is by making it directly executable, or else by passing the name of the source file as an argument on the command line. (An interactive Perl environment is also possible--see perldebug for details on how to do that.) Upon startup, Perl looks for your program in one of the following places: 1. Specified line by line via __-e__ switches on the command line. 2. Contained in the file specified by the first filename on the command line. (Note that systems supporting the #! notation invoke interpreters this way. See ``Location of Perl''.) 3. Passed in implicitly via standard input. This works only if there are no filename arguments--to pass arguments to a STDIN-read program you must explicitly specify a ``-'' for the program name. With methods 2 and 3, Perl starts parsing the input file from the beginning, unless you've specified a __-x__ switch, in which case it scans for the first line starting with #! and containing the word ``perl'', and starts there instead. This is useful for running a program embedded in a larger message. (In this case you would indicate the end of the program using the __END__ token.) The #! line is always examined for switches as the line is being parsed. Thus, if you're on a machine that allows only one argument with the #! line, or worse, doesn't even recognize the #! line, you still can get consistent switch behavior regardless of how Perl was invoked, even if __-x__ was used to find the beginning of the program. Because historically some operating systems silently chopped off kernel interpretation of the #! line after 32 characters, some switches may be passed in on the command line, and some may not; you could even get a ``-'' without its letter, if you're not careful. You probably want to make sure that all your switches fall either before or after that 32-character boundary. Most switches don't actually care if they're processed redundantly, but getting a ``-'' instead of a complete switch could cause Perl to try to execute standard input instead of your program. And a partial __-I__ switch could also cause odd results. Some switches do care if they are processed twice, for instance combinations of __-l__ and __-0__. Either put all the switches after the 32-character boundary (if applicable), or replace the use of __-0__''digits'' by BEGIN{ $/ = . Parsing of the #! switches starts wherever ``perl'' is mentioned in the line. The sequences ``-*'' and ``- '' are specifically ignored so that you could, if you were so inclined, say #!/bin/sh -- # -*- perl -*- -p eval 'exec perl -wS $0 ${1+ to let Perl see the __-p__ switch. A similar trick involves the __env__ program, if you have it. #!/usr/bin/env perl The examples above use a relative path to the perl interpreter, getting whatever version is first in the user's path. If you want a specific version of Perl, say, perl5.005_57, you should place that directly in the #! line's path. If the #! line does not contain the word ``perl'', the program named after the #! is executed instead of the Perl interpreter. This is slightly bizarre, but it helps people on machines that don't do #!, because they can tell a program that their SHELL is ''/usr/bin/perl'', and Perl will then dispatch the program to the correct interpreter for them. After locating your program, Perl compiles the entire program to an internal form. If there are any compilation errors, execution of the program is not attempted. (This is unlike the typical shell script, which might run part-way through before finding a syntax error.) If the program is syntactically correct, it is executed. If the program runs off the end without hitting an ''exit()'' or ''die()'' operator, an implicit exit(0) is provided to indicate successful completion. __#! and quoting on non-Unix systems__ Unix's #! technique can be simulated on other systems: OS/2 Put extproc perl -S -your_switches as the first line in *.cmd file (__-S__ due to a bug in cmd.exe's `extproc' handling). MS-DOS Create a batch file to run your program, and codify it in ALTERNATIVE_SHEBANG (see the ''dosish.h'' file in the source distribution for more information). Win95/NT The Win95/NT installation, when using the !ActiveState installer for Perl, will modify the Registry to associate the ''.pl'' extension with the perl interpreter. If you install Perl by other means (including building from the sources), you may have to modify the Registry yourself. Note that this means you can no longer tell the difference between an executable Perl program and a Perl library file. Macintosh A Macintosh perl program will have the appropriate Creator and Type, so that double-clicking them will invoke the perl application. VMS Put $ perl -mysw 'f$env( at the top of your program, where __-mysw__ are any command line switches you want to pass to Perl. You can now invoke the program directly, by saying perl program, or as a DCL procedure, by saying @program (or implicitly via ''DCL$PATH'' by just using the name of the program). This incantation is a bit much to remember, but Perl will display it for you if you say perl . Command-interpreters on non-Unix systems have rather different ideas on quoting than Unix shells. You'll need to learn the special characters in your command-interpreter (*, \ and are common) and how to protect whitespace and these characters to run one-liners (see __-e__ below). On some systems, you may have to change single-quotes to double ones, which you must ''not'' do on Unix or Plan9 systems. You might also have to change a single % to a %%. For example: # Unix perl -e 'print # MS-DOS, etc. perl -e # Macintosh print # VMS perl -e The problem is that none of this is reliable: it depends on the command and it is entirely possible neither works. If __4DOS__ were the command shell, this would probably work better: perl -e __CMD .EXE__ in Windows NT slipped a lot of standard Unix functionality in when nobody was looking, but just try to find documentation for its quoting rules. Under the Macintosh, it depends which environment you are using. The !MacPerl shell, or MPW , is much like Unix shells in its support for several quoting variants, except that it makes free use of the Macintosh's non-ASCII characters as control characters. There is no general solution to all of this. It's just a mess. __Location of Perl__ It may seem obvious to say, but Perl is useful only when users can easily find it. When possible, it's good for both ''/usr/bin/perl'' and ''/usr/local/bin/perl'' to be symlinks to the actual binary. If that can't be done, system administrators are strongly encouraged to put (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities into a directory typically found along a user's PATH , or in some other obvious and convenient place. In this documentation, #!/usr/bin/perl on the first line of the program will stand in for whatever method works on your system. You are advised to use a specific path if you care about a specific version. #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.00554 or if you just want to be running at least version, place a statement like this at the top of your program: use 5.005_54; __Command Switches__ As with all standard commands, a single-character switch may be clustered with the following switch, if any. #!/usr/bin/perl -spi.orig # same as -s -p -i.orig Switches include: __-0__[[''digits''] specifies the input record separator ($/) as an octal number. If there are no digits, the null character is the separator. Other switches may precede or follow the digits. For example, if you have a version of __find__ which can print filenames terminated by the null character, you can say this: find . -name '*.orig' -print0 perl -n0e unlink The special value 00 will cause Perl to slurp files in paragraph mode. The value 0777 will cause Perl to slurp files whole because there is no legal character with that value. __-a__ turns on autosplit mode when used with a __-n__ or __-p__. An implicit split command to the @F array is done as the first thing inside the implicit while loop produced by the __-n__ or __-p__. perl -ane 'print pop(@F), is equivalent to while ( An alternate delimiter may be specified using __-F__. __-C__ enables Perl to use the native wide character APIs on the target system. The magic variable ${^WIDE_SYSTEM_CALLS} reflects the state of this switch. See ``${^WIDE_SYSTEM_CALLS}'' in perlvar. This feature is currently only implemented on the Win32 platform. __-c__ causes Perl to check the syntax of the program and then exit without executing it. Actually, it ''will'' execute BEGIN, CHECK, and use blocks, because these are considered as occurring outside the execution of your program. INIT and END blocks, however, will be skipped. __-d__ runs the program under the Perl debugger. See perldebug. __-d:__''foo[[=bar,baz]'' runs the program under the control of a debugging, profiling, or tracing module installed as Devel::foo. E.g., __-d:DProf__ executes the program using the Devel::DProf profiler. As with the __-M__ flag, options may be passed to the Devel::foo package where they will be received and interpreted by the Devel::foo::import routine. The comma-separated list of options must follow a = character. See perldebug. __-D__''letters'' __-D__''number'' sets debugging flags. To watch how it executes your program, use __-Dtls__. (This works only if debugging is compiled into your Perl.) Another nice value is __-Dx__, which lists your compiled syntax tree. And __-Dr__ displays compiled regular expressions. As an alternative, specify a number instead of list of letters (e.g., __-D14__ is equivalent to __-Dtls__): 1 p Tokenizing and parsing 2 s Stack snapshots 4 l Context (loop) stack processing 8 t Trace execution 16 o Method and overloading resolution 32 c String/numeric conversions 64 P Print preprocessor command for -P, source file input state 128 m Memory allocation 256 f Format processing 512 r Regular expression parsing and execution 1024 x Syntax tree dump 2048 u Tainting checks 4096 L Memory leaks (needs -DLEAKTEST when compiling Perl) 8192 H Hash dump -- usurps values() 16384 X Scratchpad allocation 32768 D Cleaning up 65536 S Thread synchronization 131072 T Tokenising All these flags require __-DDEBUGGING__ when you compile the Perl executable. See the ''INSTALL'' file in the Perl source distribution for how to do this. This flag is automatically set if you include __-g__ option when Configure asks you about optimizer/debugger flags. If you're just trying to get a print out of each line of Perl code as it executes, the way that sh -x provides for shell scripts, you can't use Perl's __-D__ switch. Instead do this # Bourne shell syntax $ PERLDB_OPTS= # csh syntax % (setenv PERLDB_OPTS See perldebug for details and variations. __-e__ ''commandline'' may be used to enter one line of program. If __-e__ is given, Perl will not look for a filename in the argument list. Multiple __-e__ commands may be given to build up a multi-line script. Make sure to use semicolons where you would in a normal program. __-F__''pattern'' specifies the pattern to split on if __-a__ is also in effect. The pattern may be surrounded by //, , or '', otherwise it will be put in single quotes. __-h__ prints a summary of the options. __-i__[[''extension''] specifies that files processed by the construct are to be edited in-place. It does this by renaming the input file, opening the output file by the original name, and selecting that output file as the default for ''print()'' statements. The extension, if supplied, is used to modify the name of the old file to make a backup copy, following these rules: If no extension is supplied, no backup is made and the current file is overwritten. If the extension doesn't contain a *, then it is appended to the end of the current filename as a suffix. If the extension does contain one or more * characters, then each * is replaced with the current filename. In Perl terms, you could think of this as: ($backup = $extension) =~ s/*/$file_name/g; This allows you to add a prefix to the backup file, instead of (or in addition to) a suffix: $ perl -pi 'orig_*' -e 's/bar/baz/' fileA # backup to 'orig_fileA' Or even to place backup copies of the original files into another directory (provided the directory already exists): $ perl -pi 'old/*.orig' -e 's/bar/baz/' fileA # backup to 'old/fileA.orig' These sets of one-liners are equivalent: $ perl -pi -e 's/bar/baz/' fileA # overwrite current file $ perl -pi '*' -e 's/bar/baz/' fileA # overwrite current file $ perl -pi '.orig' -e 's/bar/baz/' fileA # backup to 'fileA.orig' $ perl -pi '*.orig' -e 's/bar/baz/' fileA # backup to 'fileA.orig' From the shell, saying $ perl -p -i.orig -e is the same as using the program: #!/usr/bin/perl -pi.orig s/foo/bar/; which is equivalent to #!/usr/bin/perl $extension = '.orig'; LINE: while ( except that the __-i__ form doesn't need to compare $ARGV to $oldargv to know when the filename has changed. It does, however, use ARGVOUT for the selected filehandle. Note that STDOUT is restored as the default output filehandle after the loop. As shown above, Perl creates the backup file whether or not any output is actually changed. So this is just a fancy way to copy files: $ perl -p -i '/some/file/path/*' -e 1 file1 file2 file3... or $ perl -p -i '.orig' -e 1 file1 file2 file3... You can use eof without parentheses to locate the end of each input file, in case you want to append to each file, or reset line numbering (see example in ``eof'' in perlfunc). If, for a given file, Perl is unable to create the backup file as specified in the extension then it will skip that file and continue on with the next one (if it exists). For a discussion of issues surrounding file permissions and __-i__, see ``Why does Perl let me delete read-only files? Why does -i clobber protected files? Isn't this a bug in Perl?'' in perlfaq5. You cannot use __-i__ to create directories or to strip extensions from files. Perl does not expand ~ in filenames, which is good, since some folks use it for their backup files: $ perl -pi~ -e 's/foo/bar/' file1 file2 file3... Finally, the __-i__ switch does not impede execution when no files are given on the command line. In this case, no backup is made (the original file cannot, of course, be determined) and processing proceeds from STDIN to STDOUT as might be expected. __-I__''directory'' Directories specified by __-I__ are prepended to the search path for modules (@INC), and also tells the C preprocessor where to search for include files. The C preprocessor is invoked with __-P__; by default it searches /usr/include and /usr/lib/perl. __-l__[[''octnum''] enables automatic line-ending processing. It has two separate effects. First, it automatically chomps $/ (the input record separator) when used with __-n__ or __-p__. Second, it assigns $\ (the output record separator) to have the value of ''octnum'' so that any print statements will have that separator added back on. If ''octnum'' is omitted, sets $\ to the current value of $/. For instance, to trim lines to 80 columns: perl -lpe 'substr($_, 80) = Note that the assignment $\ = $/ is done when the switch is processed, so the input record separator can be different than the output record separator if the __-l__ switch is followed by a __-0__ switch: gnufind / -print0 perl -ln0e 'print This sets $\ to newline and then sets $/ to the null character. __-m__[[__-__]''module'' __-M__[[__-__]''module'' __-M__[[__-__]'''module ...''' __-[[mM]__[[__-__]''module=arg[[,arg]...'' __-m__''module'' executes use ''module'' (); before executing your program. __-M__''module'' executes use ''module'' ; before executing your program. You can use quotes to add extra code after the module name, e.g., '-Mmodule qw(foo bar)'. If the first character after the __-M__ or __-m__ is a dash (-) then the 'use' is replaced with 'no'. A little builtin syntactic sugar means you can also say __-mmodule=foo,bar__ or __-Mmodule=foo,bar__ as a shortcut for '-Mmodule qw(foo bar)'. This avoids the need to use quotes when importing symbols. The actual code generated by __-Mmodule=foo,bar__ is use module split(/,/,q{foo,bar}). Note that the = form removes the distinction between __-m__ and __-M__. __-n__ causes Perl to assume the following loop around your program, which makes it iterate over filename arguments somewhat like __sed -n__ or __awk__: LINE: while ( Note that the lines are not printed by default. See __-p__ to have lines printed. If a file named by an argument cannot be opened for some reason, Perl warns you about it and moves on to the next file. Here is an efficient way to delete all files older than a week: find . -mtime +7 -print perl -nle unlink This is faster than using the __-exec__ switch of __find__ because you don't have to start a process on every filename found. It does suffer from the bug of mishandling newlines in pathnames, which you can fix if you BEGIN and END blocks may be used to capture control before or after the implicit program loop, just as in __awk__. __-p__ causes Perl to assume the following loop around your program, which makes it iterate over filename arguments somewhat like __sed__: LINE: while ( If a file named by an argument cannot be opened for some reason, Perl warns you about it, and moves on to the next file. Note that the lines are printed automatically. An error occurring during printing is treated as fatal. To suppress printing use the __-n__ switch. A __-p__ overrides a __-n__ switch. BEGIN and END blocks may be used to capture control before or after the implicit loop, just as in __awk__. __-P__ causes your program to be run through the C preprocessor before compilation by Perl. Because both comments and __cpp__ directives begin with the # character, you should avoid starting comments with any words recognized by the C preprocessor such as , , or . Also, in some platforms the C preprocessor knows too much: it knows about the C ++ -style until-end-of-line comments starting with . This will cause problems with common Perl constructs like s/foo//; because after -P this will became illegal code s/foo The workaround is to use some other quoting separator than , like for example : s!foo!!; __-s__ enables rudimentary switch parsing for switches on the command line after the program name but before any filename arguments (or before an argument of __--__). This means you can have switches with two leading dashes (__--help__). Any switch found there is removed from @ARGV and sets the corresponding variable in the Perl program. The following program prints ``1'' if the program is invoked with a __-xyz__ switch, and ``abc'' if it is invoked with __-xyz=abc__. #!/usr/bin/perl -s if ($xyz) { print Do note that __--help__ creates the variable ${-help}, which is not compliant with strict refs. __-S__ makes Perl use the PATH environment variable to search for the program (unless the name of the program contains directory separators). On some platforms, this also makes Perl append suffixes to the filename while searching for it. For example, on Win32 platforms, the ``.bat'' and ``.cmd'' suffixes are appended if a lookup for the original name fails, and if the name does not already end in one of those suffixes. If your Perl was compiled with DEBUGGING turned on, using the -Dp switch to Perl shows how the search progresses. Typically this is used to emulate #! startup on platforms that don't support #!. This example works on many platforms that have a shell compatible with Bourne shell: #!/usr/bin/perl eval 'exec /usr/bin/perl -wS $0 ${1+ The system ignores the first line and feeds the program to ''/bin/sh'', which proceeds to try to execute the Perl program as a shell script. The shell executes the second line as a normal shell command, and thus starts up the Perl interpreter. On some systems $0 doesn't always contain the full pathname, so the __-S__ tells Perl to search for the program if necessary. After Perl locates the program, it parses the lines and ignores them because the variable $running_under_some_shell is never true. If the program will be interpreted by csh, you will need to replace ${1+ with $*, even though that doesn't understand embedded spaces (and such) in the argument list. To start up sh rather than csh, some systems may have to replace the #! line with a line containing just a colon, which will be politely ignored by Perl. Other systems can't control that, and need a totally devious construct that will work under any of __csh__, __sh__, or Perl, such as the following: eval '(exit $?0)' If the filename supplied contains directory separators (i.e., is an absolute or relative pathname), and if that file is not found, platforms that append file extensions will do so and try to look for the file with those extensions added, one by one. On DOS-like platforms, if the program does not contain directory separators, it will first be searched for in the current directory before being searched for on the PATH . On Unix platforms, the program will be searched for strictly on the PATH . __-T__ forces ``taint'' checks to be turned on so you can test them. Ordinarily these checks are done only when running setuid or setgid. It's a good idea to turn them on explicitly for programs that run on behalf of someone else whom you might not necessarily trust, such as CGI programs or any internet servers you might write in Perl. See perlsec for details. For security reasons, this option must be seen by Perl quite early; usually this means it must appear early on the command line or in the #! line for systems which support that construct. __-u__ This obsolete switch causes Perl to dump core after compiling your program. You can then in theory take this core dump and turn it into an executable file by using the __undump__ program (not supplied). This speeds startup at the expense of some disk space (which you can minimize by stripping the executable). (Still, a ``hello world'' executable comes out to about 200K on my machine.) If you want to execute a portion of your program before dumping, use the ''dump()'' operator instead. Note: availability of __undump__ is platform specific and may not be available for a specific port of Perl. This switch has been superseded in favor of the new Perl code generator backends to the compiler. See B and B::Bytecode for details. __-U__ allows Perl to do unsafe operations. Currently the only ``unsafe'' operations are the unlinking of directories while running as superuser, and running setuid programs with fatal taint checks turned into warnings. Note that the __-w__ switch (or the $^W variable) must be used along with this option to actually ''generate'' the taint-check warnings. __-v__ prints the version and patchlevel of your perl executable. __-V__ prints summary of the major perl configuration values and the current values of @INC. __-V:__''name'' Prints to STDOUT the value of the named configuration variable. For example, $ perl -V:man.dir will provide strong clues about what your MANPATH variable should be set to in order to access the Perl documentation. __-w__ prints warnings about dubious constructs, such as variable names that are mentioned only once and scalar variables that are used before being set, redefined subroutines, references to undefined filehandles or filehandles opened read-only that you are attempting to write on, values used as a number that doesn't look like numbers, using an array as though it were a scalar, if your subroutines recurse more than 100 deep, and innumerable other things. This switch really just enables the internal ^$W variable. You can disable or promote into fatal errors specific warnings using __WARN__ hooks, as described in perlvar and ``warn'' in perlfunc. See also perldiag and perltrap. A new, fine-grained warning facility is also available if you want to manipulate entire classes of warnings; see warnings or perllexwarn. __-W__ Enables all warnings regardless of no warnings or $^W. See perllexwarn. __-X__ Disables all warnings regardless of use warnings or $^W. See perllexwarn. __-x__ ''directory'' tells Perl that the program is embedded in a larger chunk of unrelated ASCII text, such as in a mail message. Leading garbage will be discarded until the first line that starts with #! and contains the string ``perl''. Any meaningful switches on that line will be applied. If a directory name is specified, Perl will switch to that directory before running the program. The __-x__ switch controls only the disposal of leading garbage. The program must be terminated with __END__ if there is trailing garbage to be ignored (the program can process any or all of the trailing garbage via the DATA filehandle if desired). !!ENVIRONMENT HOME Used if chdir has no argument. LOGDIR Used if chdir has no argument and HOME is not set. PATH Used in executing subprocesses, and in finding the program if __-S__ is used. PERL5LIB A colon-separated list of directories in which to look for Perl library files before looking in the standard library and the current directory. Any architecture-specific directories under the specified locations are automatically included if they exist. If PERL5LIB is not defined, PERLLIB is used. When running taint checks (either because the program was running setuid or setgid, or the __-T__ switch was used), neither variable is used. The program should instead say: use lib PERL5OPT Command-line options (switches). Switches in this variable are taken as if they were on every Perl command line. Only the __-[[DIMUdmw]__ switches are allowed. When running taint checks (because the program was running setuid or setgid, or the __-T__ switch was used), this variable is ignored. If PERL5OPT begins with __-T__, tainting will be enabled, and any subsequent options ignored. PERLLIB A colon-separated list of directories in which to look for Perl library files before looking in the standard library and the current directory. If PERL5LIB is defined, PERLLIB is not used. PERL5DB The command used to load the debugger code. The default is: BEGIN { require 'perl5db.pl' } PERL5SHELL (specific to the Win32 port) May be set to an alternative shell that perl must use internally for executing ``backtick'' commands or ''system()''. Default is cmd.exe /x/c on WindowsNT and command.com /c on Windows95. The value is considered to be space-separated. Precede any character that needs to be protected (like a space or backslash) with a backslash. Note that Perl doesn't use COMSPEC for this purpose because COMSPEC has a high degree of variability among users, leading to portability concerns. Besides, perl can use a shell that may not be fit for interactive use, and setting COMSPEC to such a shell may interfere with the proper functioning of other programs (which usually look in COMSPEC to find a shell fit for interactive use). PERL_DEBUG_MSTATS Relevant only if perl is compiled with the malloc included with the perl distribution (that is, if perl -V:d_mymalloc is 'define'). If set, this causes memory statistics to be dumped after execution. If set to an integer greater than one, also causes memory statistics to be dumped after compilation. PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL Relevant only if your perl executable was built with __-DDEBUGGING__, this controls the behavior of global destruction of objects and other references. PERL_ROOT (specific to the VMS port) A translation concealed rooted logical name that contains perl and the logical device for the @INC path on VMS only. Other logical names that affect perl on VMS include PERLSHR , PERL_ENV_TABLES , and SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL but are optional and discussed further in perlvms and in ''README .vms'' in the Perl source distribution. SYS$LOGIN (specific to the VMS port) Used if chdir has no argument and HOME and LOGDIR are not set. Perl also has environment variables that control how Perl handles data specific to particular natural languages. See perllocale. Apart from these, Perl uses no other environment variables, except to make them available to the program being executed, and to child processes. However, programs running setuid would do well to execute the following lines before doing anything else, just to keep people honest: $ENV{PATH} = '/bin:/usr/bin'; # or whatever you need $ENV{SHELL} = '/bin/sh' if exists $ENV{SHELL}; delete @ENV{qw(IFS CDPATH ENV BASH_ENV)}; ----
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