| perldoc - Look up Perl documentation in Pod format. |
perldoc - Look up Perl documentation in Pod format.
perldoc [-h] [-D] [-t] [-u] [-m] [-l] [-U] [-F]
[-i] [-V] [-T] [-r]
[-d destination_file]
[-o formatname]
[-M FormatterClassName]
[-w formatteroption:value]
[-n nroff-replacement]
[-X]
[-L language_code]
PageName|ModuleName|ProgramName|URL
Examples:
perldoc -f BuiltinFunction
perldoc -L it -f BuiltinFunction
perldoc -q FAQ Keyword
perldoc -L fr -q FAQ Keyword
perldoc -v PerlVariable
perldoc -a PerlAPI
See below for more description of the switches.
perldoc looks up documentation in .pod format that is embedded in the perl installation tree or in a perl script, and displays it using a variety of formatters. 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.
NOTE: Please see the heading SECURITY below for more information.
Example:
perldoc -f sprintf
Example:
perldoc -q shuffle
Example:
perldoc -a newHV
Examples:
perldoc -v '$"'
perldoc -v @+
perldoc -v DATA
perldoc -oLaTeX -dtextwrapdocs.tex Text::Wrap
-oman. This is actually just a wrapper around the -M switch;
using -oformatname just looks for a loadable class by adding
that format name (with different capitalizations) to the end of
different classname prefixes.
For example, -oLaTeX currently 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.
parse_from_file method.
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 textsize:15 will 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 if textsize expects 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 an ``='' instead of the ``:'', as in: -w textsize=15. This
might be more (or less) convenient, depending on what shell you use.
$Config{archlib}/pod.idx. The pod.idx file should contain fully
qualified filenames, one per line.
POD2::<language_code> package isn't
installed in your system, the switch is ignored.
All available translation packages are to be found under the POD2::
namespace. See the POD2::IT manpage (or the POD2::FR manpage) to see how to create new
localized POD2::* documentation packages and integrate them into
the Pod::Perldoc manpage.
File::Basename)
are specified either as File::Basename or File/Basename. You may also
give a descriptive name of a page, such as perlfunc. For URLs, HTTP and
HTTPS are the only kind currently supported.
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''.
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.
See the -U option if you do not want this behavior but beware
that there are significant security risks if you choose to use -U.
Since 3.26, using -F as the superuser also implies -U as opening
most files and traversing directories requires privileges that are
above the nobody/nogroup level.
Any switches in the PERLDOC environment variable will be used before the
command line arguments.
Useful values for PERLDOC include -oterm, -otext, -ortf,
-oxml, and so on, depending on what modules you have on hand; or
the formatter class may be specified exactly with -MPod::Perldoc::ToTerm
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.)
In directories where either Makefile.PL or Build.PL exist, perldoc
will add . and lib first to its search path, and as long as you're not
the superuser will add blib too. This is really helpful if you're working
inside of a build directory and want to read through the docs even if you
have a version of a module previously installed.
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.)
When using perldoc in it's -m mode (display module source code),
perldoc will attempt to use the pager set in PERLDOC_SRC_PAGER.
A useful setting for this command is your favorite editor as in
/usr/bin/nano. (Don't judge me.)
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 -D switch does; the higher the
number, the more it emits.
Up to 3.14_05, the switch -v was used to produce verbose messages of perldoc operation, which is now enabled by -D.
the perlpod manpage, the Pod::Perldoc manpage
Current maintainer: Mark Allen <mallen@cpan.org>
Past contributors are:
brian d foy <bdfoy@cpan.org>
Adriano R. Ferreira <ferreira@cpan.org>,
Sean M. Burke <sburke@cpan.org>,
Kenneth Albanowski <kjahds@kjahds.com>,
Andy Dougherty <doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu>,
and many others.
| perldoc - Look up Perl documentation in Pod format. |