1PERLDOC(1)            User Contributed Perl Documentation           PERLDOC(1)
2
3
4

NAME

6       perldoc - Look up Perl documentation in Pod format.
7

SYNOPSIS

9           perldoc [-h] [-D] [-t] [-u] [-m] [-l] [-F]
10               [-i] [-V] [-T] [-r]
11               [-d destination_file]
12               [-o formatname]
13               [-M FormatterClassName]
14               [-w formatteroption:value]
15               [-n nroff-replacement]
16               [-X]
17               [-L language_code]
18               PageName|ModuleName|ProgramName|URL
19
20       Examples:
21
22           perldoc -f BuiltinFunction
23
24           perldoc -L it -f BuiltinFunction
25
26           perldoc -q FAQ Keyword
27
28           perldoc -L fr -q FAQ Keyword
29
30           perldoc -v PerlVariable
31
32       See below for more description of the switches.
33

DESCRIPTION

35       perldoc looks up a piece of documentation in .pod format that is
36       embedded in the perl installation tree or in a perl script, and
37       displays it via "groff -man | $PAGER". (In addition, if running under
38       HP-UX, "col -x" will be used.) This is primarily used for the
39       documentation for the perl library modules.
40
41       Your system may also have man pages installed for those modules, in
42       which case you can probably just use the man(1) command.
43
44       If you are looking for a table of contents to the Perl library modules
45       documentation, see the perltoc page.
46

OPTIONS

48       -h   Prints out a brief help message.
49
50       -D   Describes search for the item in detail.
51
52       -t   Display docs using plain text converter, instead of nroff. This
53            may be faster, but it probably won't look as nice.
54
55       -u   Skip the real Pod formatting, and just show the raw Pod source
56            (Unformatted)
57
58       -m module
59            Display the entire module: both code and unformatted pod
60            documentation.  This may be useful if the docs don't explain a
61            function in the detail you need, and you'd like to inspect the
62            code directly; perldoc will find the file for you and simply hand
63            it off for display.
64
65       -l   Display only the file name of the module found.
66
67       -F   Consider arguments as file names; no search in directories will be
68            performed.
69
70       -f perlfunc
71            The -f option followed by the name of a perl built-in function
72            will extract the documentation of this function from perlfunc.
73
74            Example:
75
76                  perldoc -f sprintf
77
78       -q perlfaq-search-regexp
79            The -q option takes a regular expression as an argument.  It will
80            search the question headings in perlfaq[1-9] and print the entries
81            matching the regular expression.
82
83            Example:
84
85                 perldoc -q shuffle
86
87       -v perlvar
88            The -v option followed by the name of a Perl predefined variable
89            will extract the documentation of this variable from perlvar.
90
91            Examples:
92
93                 perldoc -v '$"'
94                 perldoc -v @+
95                 perldoc -v DATA
96
97       -T   This specifies that the output is not to be sent to a pager, but
98            is to be sent directly to STDOUT.
99
100       -d destination-filename
101            This specifies that the output is to be sent neither to a pager
102            nor to STDOUT, but is to be saved to the specified filename.
103            Example: "perldoc -oLaTeX -dtextwrapdocs.tex Text::Wrap"
104
105       -o output-formatname
106            This specifies that you want Perldoc to try using a Pod-formatting
107            class for the output format that you specify.  For example:
108            "-oman".  This is actually just a wrapper around the "-M" switch;
109            using "-oformatname" just looks for a loadable class by adding
110            that format name (with different capitalizations) to the end of
111            different classname prefixes.
112
113            For example, "-oLaTeX" currently tries all of the following
114            classes: Pod::Perldoc::ToLaTeX Pod::Perldoc::Tolatex
115            Pod::Perldoc::ToLatex Pod::Perldoc::ToLATEX Pod::Simple::LaTeX
116            Pod::Simple::latex Pod::Simple::Latex Pod::Simple::LATEX
117            Pod::LaTeX Pod::latex Pod::Latex Pod::LATEX.
118
119       -M module-name
120            This specifies the module that you want to try using for
121            formatting the pod.  The class must at least provide a
122            "parse_from_file" method.  For example: "perldoc
123            -MPod::Perldoc::ToChecker".
124
125            You can specify several classes to try by joining them with commas
126            or semicolons, as in "-MTk::SuperPod;Tk::Pod".
127
128       -w option:value or -w option
129            This specifies an option to call the formatter with.  For example,
130            "-w textsize:15" will call "$formatter->textsize(15)" on the
131            formatter object before it is used to format the object.  For this
132            to be valid, the formatter class must provide such a method, and
133            the value you pass should be valid.  (So if "textsize" expects an
134            integer, and you do "-w textsize:big", expect trouble.)
135
136            You can use "-w optionname" (without a value) as shorthand for "-w
137            optionname:TRUE".  This is presumably useful in cases of on/off
138            features like: "-w page_numbering".
139
140            You can use an "=" instead of the ":", as in: "-w textsize=15".
141            This might be more (or less) convenient, depending on what shell
142            you use.
143
144       -X   Use an index if it is present. The -X option looks for an entry
145            whose basename matches the name given on the command line in the
146            file "$Config{archlib}/pod.idx". The pod.idx file should contain
147            fully qualified filenames, one per line.
148
149       -L language_code
150            This allows one to specify the language code for the desired
151            language translation. If the "POD2::<language_code>" package isn't
152            installed in your system, the switch is ignored.  All available
153            translation packages are to be found under the "POD2::" namespace.
154            See POD2::IT (or POD2::FR) to see how to create new localized
155            "POD2::*" documentation packages and integrate them into
156            Pod::Perldoc.
157
158       PageName|ModuleName|ProgramName|URL
159            The item you want to look up.  Nested modules (such as
160            "File::Basename") are specified either as "File::Basename" or
161            "File/Basename".  You may also give a descriptive name of a page,
162            such as "perlfunc".  For URLs, HTTP and HTTPS are the only kind
163            currently supported.
164
165            For simple names like 'foo', when the normal search fails to find
166            a matching page, a search with the "perl" prefix is tried as well.
167            So "perldoc intro" is enough to find/render "perlintro.pod".
168
169       -n some-formatter
170            Specify replacement for groff
171
172       -r   Recursive search.
173
174       -i   Ignore case.
175
176       -V   Displays the version of perldoc you're running.
177

SECURITY

179       Because perldoc does not run properly tainted, and is known to have
180       security issues, when run as the superuser it will attempt to drop
181       privileges by setting the effective and real IDs to nobody's or
182       nouser's account, or -2 if unavailable.  If it cannot relinquish its
183       privileges, it will not run.
184

ENVIRONMENT

186       Any switches in the "PERLDOC" environment variable will be used before
187       the command line arguments.
188
189       Useful values for "PERLDOC" include "-oterm", "-otext", "-ortf",
190       "-oxml", and so on, depending on what modules you have on hand; or the
191       formatter class may be specified exactly with "-MPod::Perldoc::ToTerm"
192       or the like.
193
194       "perldoc" also searches directories specified by the "PERL5LIB" (or
195       "PERLLIB" if "PERL5LIB" is not defined) and "PATH" environment
196       variables.  (The latter is so that embedded pods for executables, such
197       as "perldoc" itself, are available.)
198
199       In directories where either "Makefile.PL" or "Build.PL" exist,
200       "perldoc" will add "." and "lib" first to its search path, and as long
201       as you're not the superuser will add "blib" too.  This is really
202       helpful if you're working inside of a build directory and want to read
203       through the docs even if you have a version of a module previously
204       installed.
205
206       "perldoc" will use, in order of preference, the pager defined in
207       "PERLDOC_PAGER", "MANPAGER", or "PAGER" before trying to find a pager
208       on its own. ("MANPAGER" is not used if "perldoc" was told to display
209       plain text or unformatted pod.)
210
211       One useful value for "PERLDOC_PAGER" is "less -+C -E".
212
213       Having PERLDOCDEBUG set to a positive integer will make perldoc emit
214       even more descriptive output than the "-D" switch does; the higher the
215       number, the more it emits.
216

CHANGES

218       Up to 3.14_05, the switch -v was used to produce verbose messages of
219       perldoc operation, which is now enabled by -D.
220

SEE ALSO

222       perlpod, Pod::Perldoc
223

AUTHOR

225       Current maintainer: Mark Allen "<mallen@cpan.org>"
226
227       Past contributors are: brian d foy "<bdfoy@cpan.org>" Adriano R.
228       Ferreira "<ferreira@cpan.org>", Sean M. Burke "<sburke@cpan.org>",
229       Kenneth Albanowski "<kjahds@kjahds.com>", Andy Dougherty
230       "<doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu>", and many others.
231
232
233
234perl v5.16.3                      2013-01-28                        PERLDOC(1)
Impressum