1PERLDOC(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLDOC(1)
2
6 perldoc - Look up Perl documentation in Pod format.
7
9 perldoc [-h] [-v] [-t] [-u] [-m] [-l] [-F] [-i] [-V] [-T] [-r] [-ddes‐
10 tination_file] [-oformatname] [-MFormatterClassName] [-wformatterop‐
11 tion:value] [-nnroff-replacement] [-X] PageName⎪ModuleName⎪ProgramName
12 perldoc -f BuiltinFunction
14 perldoc -q FAQ Keyword
16 See below for more description of the switches.
18
20 perldoc looks up a piece of documentation in .pod format that is embed‐
21 ded in the perl installation tree or in a perl script, and displays it
22 via "pod2man ⎪ nroff -man ⎪ $PAGER". (In addition, if running under
23 HP-UX, "col -x" will be used.) This is primarily used for the documen‐
24 tation for the perl library modules.
25 Your system may also have man pages installed for those modules, in
27 which case you can probably just use the man(1) command.
28 If you are looking for a table of contents to the Perl library modules
30 documentation, see the perltoc page.
31
33 -h Prints out a brief help message.
34 -v Describes search for the item in detail (verbosely).
36 -t Display docs using plain text converter, instead of nroff. This
38 may be faster, but it probably won't look as nice.
39 -u Skip the real Pod formatting, and just show the raw Pod source
41 (Unformatted)
42 -m module
44 Display the entire module: both code and unformatted pod documen‐
45 tation. This may be useful if the docs don't explain a function
46 in the detail you need, and you'd like to inspect the code
47 directly; perldoc will find the file for you and simply hand it
48 off for display.
49 -l Display only the file name of the module found.
51 -F Consider arguments as file names; no search in directories will be
53 performed.
54 -f perlfunc
56 The -f option followed by the name of a perl built in function
57 will extract the documentation of this function from perlfunc.
58 Example:
60 perldoc -f sprintf
62 -q perlfaq-search-regexp
64 The -q option takes a regular expression as an argument. It will
65 search the question headings in perlfaq[1-9] and print the entries
66 matching the regular expression. Example: "perldoc -q shuffle"
67 -T This specifies that the output is not to be sent to a pager, but
69 is to be sent right to STDOUT.
70 -d destination-filename
72 This specifies that the output is to be sent neither to a pager
73 nor to STDOUT, but is to be saved to the specified filename.
74 Example: "perldoc -oLaTeX -dtextwrapdocs.tex Text::Wrap"
75 -o output-formatname
77 This specifies that you want Perldoc to try using a Pod-formatting
78 class for the output format that you specify. For example:
79 "-oman". This is actually just a wrapper around the "-M" switch;
80 using "-oformatname" just looks for a loadable class by adding
81 that format name (with different capitalizations) to the end of
82 different classname prefixes.
83 For example, "-oLaTeX" currently tries all of the following
85 classes: Pod::Perldoc::ToLaTeX Pod::Perldoc::Tolatex Pod::Perl‐
86 doc::ToLatex Pod::Perldoc::ToLATEX Pod::Simple::LaTeX Pod::Sim‐
87 ple::latex Pod::Simple::Latex Pod::Simple::LATEX Pod::LaTeX
88 Pod::latex Pod::Latex Pod::LATEX.
89 -M module-name
91 This specifies the module that you want to try using for format‐
92 ting the pod. The class must at least provide a "parse_from_file"
93 method. For example: "perldoc -MPod::Perldoc::ToChecker".
94 You can specify several classes to try by joining them with commas
96 or semicolons, as in "-MTk::SuperPod;Tk::Pod".
97 -w option:value or -w option
99 This specifies an option to call the formatter with. For example,
100 "-w textsize:15" will call "$formatter->textsize(15)" on the for‐
101 matter object before it is used to format the object. For this to
102 be valid, the formatter class must provide such a method, and the
103 value you pass should be valid. (So if "textsize" expects an
104 integer, and you do "-w textsize:big", expect trouble.)
105 You can use "-w optionname" (without a value) as shorthand for "-w
107 optionname:TRUE". This is presumably useful in cases of on/off
108 features like: "-w page_numbering".
109 You can use a "=" instead of the ":", as in: "-w textsize=15".
111 This might be more (or less) convenient, depending on what shell
112 you use.
113 -X Use an index if it is present -- the -X option looks for an entry
115 whose basename matches the name given on the command line in the
116 file "$Config{archlib}/pod.idx". The pod.idx file should contain
117 fully qualified filenames, one per line.
118 PageName⎪ModuleName⎪ProgramName
120 The item you want to look up. Nested modules (such as
121 "File::Basename") are specified either as "File::Basename" or
122 "File/Basename". You may also give a descriptive name of a page,
123 such as "perlfunc".
124 -n some-formatter
126 Specify replacement for nroff
127 -r Recursive search.
129 -i Ignore case.
131 -V Displays the version of perldoc you're running.
133
135 Because perldoc does not run properly tainted, and is known to have
136 security issues, when run as the superuser it will attempt to drop
137 privileges by setting the effective and real IDs to nobody's or
138 nouser's account, or -2 if unavailable. If it cannot relinquish its
139 privileges, it will not run.
140
142 Any switches in the "PERLDOC" environment variable will be used before
143 the command line arguments.
144 Useful values for "PERLDOC" include "-oman", "-otext", "-otk", "-ortf",
146 "-oxml", and so on, depending on what modules you have on hand; or
147 exactly specify the formatter class with "-MPod::Perldoc::ToMan" or the
148 like.
149 "perldoc" also searches directories specified by the "PERL5LIB" (or
151 "PERLLIB" if "PERL5LIB" is not defined) and "PATH" environment vari‐
152 ables. (The latter is so that embedded pods for executables, such as
153 "perldoc" itself, are available.)
154 "perldoc" will use, in order of preference, the pager defined in "PERL‐
156 DOC_PAGER", "MANPAGER", or "PAGER" before trying to find a pager on its
157 own. ("MANPAGER" is not used if "perldoc" was told to display plain
158 text or unformatted pod.)
159 One useful value for "PERLDOC_PAGER" is "less -+C -E".
161 Having PERLDOCDEBUG set to a positive integer will make perldoc emit
163 even more descriptive output than the "-v" switch does -- the higher
164 the number, the more it emits.
165
167 Current maintainer: Sean M. Burke, <sburke@cpan.org>
168 Past contributors are: Kenneth Albanowski <kjahds@kjahds.com>, Andy
170 Dougherty <doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu>, and many others.
171perl v5.8.8 2005-08-08 PERLDOC(1)