NAME
perldoc - Look up Perl documentation in Pod format.
SYNOPSIS
perldoc [-h] [-D] [-t] [-u] [-m] [-l] [-F] [-i] [-V] [-T] [-r] [-ddestination_file] [-oformatname] [-MFormatterClassName] [-wformatteroption:value] [-nnroff-replacement] [-X] [-L language_code] PageName|ModuleName|ProgramName
perldoc -f BuiltinFunction
perldoc -L it -f BuiltinFunction
perldoc -q FAQ Keyword
perldoc -L fr -q FAQ Keyword
perldoc -v PerlVariable
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 displays it via pod2man | nroff -man | $PAGER. (In addition, if running under HP-UX, col -x will be used.) This is primarily used for the documentation for the perl library modules.
Your system may also have man pages installed for those modules, in which case you can probably just use the man(1) command.
If you are looking for a table of contents to the Perl library modules documentation, see the perltoc page.
OPTIONS
- -h
-
Prints out a brief help message.
- -D
-
Describes search for the item in detail.
- -t
-
Display docs using plain text converter, instead of nroff. This may be faster, but it probably won't look as nice.
- -u
-
Skip the real Pod formatting, and just show the raw Pod source (Unformatted)
- -m module
-
Display the entire module: both code and unformatted pod documentation. This may be useful if the docs don't explain a function in the detail you need, and you'd like to inspect the code directly; perldoc will find the file for you and simply hand it off for display.
- -l
-
Display only the file name of the module found.
- -F
-
Consider arguments as file names; no search in directories will be performed.
- -f perlfunc
-
The -f option followed by the name of a perl built in function will extract the documentation of this function from perlfunc.
Example:
perldoc -f sprintf - -q perlfaq-search-regexp
-
The -q option takes a regular expression as an argument. It will search the question headings in perlfaq[1-9] and print the entries matching the regular expression.
Example:
perldoc -q shuffle - -v perlvar
-
The -v option followed by the name of a Perl predefined variable will extract the documentation of this variable from perlvar.
Examples:
perldoc -v '$"' perldoc -v @+ perldoc -v DATA - -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-formatting class for the output format that you specify. For example:
-oman. This is actually just a wrapper around the-Mswitch; using-oformatnamejust looks for a loadable class by adding that format name (with different capitalizations) to the end of different classname prefixes.For example,
-oLaTeXcurrently tries all of the following classes: Pod::Perldoc::ToLaTeX Pod::Perldoc::Tolatex Pod::Perldoc::ToLatex Pod::Perldoc::ToLATEX Pod::Simple::LaTeX Pod::Simple::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 formatting the pod. The class must at least provide a
parse_from_filemethod. For example:perldoc -MPod::Perldoc::ToChecker.You can specify several classes to try by joining them with commas or semicolons, as in
-MTk::SuperPod;Tk::Pod. - -w option:value or -w option
-
This specifies an option to call the formatter with. For example,
-w textsize:15will 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 iftextsizeexpects an integer, and you do-w textsize:big, expect trouble.)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. - -L language_code
-
This allows to specify the language code for desired language translation. If
POD2::<language_code>package doesn't exist (or isn't installed in your system), the switch will be ignored. All available translation packages should be found under thePOD2::namespace. See POD2::IT (or POD2::FR) in order to see how to create and integrate new localizedPOD2::*pod documentation packages in Pod::Perldoc. - PageName|ModuleName|ProgramName
-
The item you want to look up. Nested modules (such as
File::Basename) are specified either asFile::BasenameorFile/Basename. You may also give a descriptive name of a page, such asperlfunc.For simple names like 'foo', when the normal search fails to find a matching page, a search with the "perl" prefix is tried as well. So "perldoc intro" is enough to find/render "perlintro.pod".
- -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::Perldoc::ToMan or the like.
perldoc also searches directories specified by the PERL5LIB (or PERLLIB if PERL5LIB is not defined) and PATH environment variables. (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.
CHANGES
Up to 3.14_05, the switch -v was used to produce verbose messages of perldoc operation, which is now enabled by -D.
SEE ALSO
AUTHOR
Current maintainer: Adriano R. Ferreira <ferreira@cpan.org>
Past contributors are: Sean M. Burke <sburke@cpan.org>, Kenneth Albanowski <kjahds@kjahds.com>, Andy Dougherty <doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu>, and many others.