3 perlutil - utilities packaged with the Perl distribution
7 Along with the Perl interpreter itself, the Perl distribution installs a
8 range of utilities on your system. There are also several utilities
9 which are used by the Perl distribution itself as part of the install
10 process. This document exists to list all of these utilities, explain
11 what they are for and provide pointers to each module's documentation,
14 =head1 LIST OF UTILITIES
20 =item L<perldoc|perldoc>
22 The main interface to Perl's documentation is C<perldoc>, although
23 if you're reading this, it's more than likely that you've already found
24 it. F<perldoc> will extract and format the documentation from any file
25 in the current directory, any Perl module installed on the system, or
26 any of the standard documentation pages, such as this one. Use
27 C<perldoc E<lt>nameE<gt>> to get information on any of the utilities
28 described in this document.
30 =item L<pod2man|pod2man> and L<pod2text|pod2text>
32 If it's run from a terminal, F<perldoc> will usually call F<pod2man> to
33 translate POD (Plain Old Documentation - see L<perlpod> for an
34 explanation) into a manpage, and then run F<man> to display it; if
35 F<man> isn't available, F<pod2text> will be used instead and the output
36 piped through your favourite pager.
38 =item L<pod2html|pod2html>
40 As well as these two, there is another converter: F<pod2html> will
41 produce HTML pages from POD.
43 =item L<pod2usage|pod2usage>
45 If you just want to know how to use the utilities described here,
46 F<pod2usage> will just extract the "USAGE" section; some of
47 the utilities will automatically call F<pod2usage> on themselves when
48 you call them with C<-help>.
50 =item L<podselect|podselect>
52 F<pod2usage> is a special case of F<podselect>, a utility to extract
53 named sections from documents written in POD. For instance, while
54 utilities have "USAGE" sections, Perl modules usually have "SYNOPSIS"
55 sections: C<podselect -s "SYNOPSIS" ...> will extract this section for
58 =item L<podchecker|podchecker>
60 If you're writing your own documentation in POD, the F<podchecker>
61 utility will look for errors in your markup.
63 =item L<splain|splain>
65 F<splain> is an interface to L<perldiag> - paste in your error message
66 to it, and it'll explain it for you.
70 The C<roffitall> utility is not installed on your system but lives in
71 the F<pod/> directory of your Perl source kit; it converts all the
72 documentation from the distribution to F<*roff> format, and produces a
73 typeset PostScript or text file of the whole lot.
79 To help you convert legacy programs to more modern Perl, the
80 L<pl2pm|pl2pm> utility will help you convert old-style Perl 4 libraries
81 to new-style Perl5 modules.
87 =item L<libnetcfg|libnetcfg>
89 To display and change the libnet configuration run the libnetcfg command.
93 The F<perlivp> program is set up at Perl source code build time to test
94 the Perl version it was built under. It can be used after running C<make
95 install> (or your platform's equivalent procedure) to verify that perl
96 and its libraries have been installed correctly.
102 There are a set of utilities which help you in developing Perl programs,
103 and in particular, extending Perl with C.
107 =item L<perlbug|perlbug>
109 F<perlbug> is the recommended way to report bugs in the perl interpreter
110 itself or any of the standard library modules back to the developers;
111 please read through the documentation for F<perlbug> thoroughly before
112 using it to submit a bug report.
114 =item L<perlthanks|perlbug>
116 This program provides an easy way to send a thank-you message back to the
117 authors and maintainers of perl. It's just F<perlbug> installed under
122 Back before Perl had the XS system for connecting with C libraries,
123 programmers used to get library constants by reading through the C
124 header files. You may still see C<require 'syscall.ph'> or similar
125 around - the F<.ph> file should be created by running F<h2ph> on the
126 corresponding F<.h> file. See the F<h2ph> documentation for more on how
127 to convert a whole bunch of header files at once.
129 =item L<c2ph|c2ph> and L<pstruct|pstruct>
131 F<c2ph> and F<pstruct>, which are actually the same program but behave
132 differently depending on how they are called, provide another way of
133 getting at C with Perl - they'll convert C structures and union declarations
134 to Perl code. This is deprecated in favour of F<h2xs> these days.
138 F<h2xs> converts C header files into XS modules, and will try and write
139 as much glue between C libraries and Perl modules as it can. It's also
140 very useful for creating skeletons of pure Perl modules.
144 F<enc2xs> builds a Perl extension for use by Encode from either
145 Unicode Character Mapping files (.ucm) or Tcl Encoding Files (.enc).
146 Besides being used internally during the build process of the Encode
147 module, you can use F<enc2xs> to add your own encoding to perl.
148 No knowledge of XS is necessary.
152 F<xsubpp> is a compiler to convert Perl XS code into C code.
153 It is typically run by the makefiles created by L<ExtUtils::MakeMaker>.
155 F<xsubpp> will compile XS code into C code by embedding the constructs
156 necessary to let C functions manipulate Perl values and creates the glue
157 necessary to let Perl access those functions.
161 F<prove> is a command-line interface to the test-running functionality
162 of F<Test::Harness>. It's an alternative to C<make test>.
166 A command-line front-end to C<Module::CoreList>, to query what modules
167 were shipped with given versions of perl.
173 A few general-purpose tools are shipped with perl, mostly because they
174 came along modules included in the perl distribution.
180 B<piconv> is a Perl version of B<iconv>, a character encoding converter
181 widely available for various Unixen today. This script was primarily a
182 technology demonstrator for Perl v5.8.0, but you can use piconv in the
183 place of iconv for virtually any case.
187 F<ptar> is a tar-like program, written in pure Perl.
191 F<ptardiff> is a small utility that produces a diff between an extracted
192 archive and an unextracted one. (Note that this utility requires the
193 C<Text::Diff> module to function properly; this module isn't distributed
194 with perl, but is available from the CPAN.)
198 F<ptargrep> is a utility to apply pattern matching to the contents of files
203 This utility, that comes with the C<Digest::SHA> module, is used to print
204 or verify SHA checksums.
208 L<zipdetails> displays information about the internal record structure of the zip file.
209 It is not concerned with displaying any details of the compressed data stored in the zip file.
215 These utilities help manage extra Perl modules that don't come with the perl
222 F<cpan> is a command-line interface to CPAN.pm. It allows you to install
223 modules or distributions from CPAN, or just get information about them, and
224 a lot more. It is similar to the command line mode of the L<CPAN> module,
230 A little interface to ExtUtils::Installed to examine installed modules,
231 validate your packlists and even create a tarball from an installed module.
237 L<perldoc|perldoc>, L<pod2man|pod2man>, L<perlpod>,
238 L<pod2html|pod2html>, L<pod2usage|pod2usage>, L<podselect|podselect>,
239 L<podchecker|podchecker>, L<splain|splain>, L<perldiag>,
240 C<roffitall|roffitall>, L<File::Find|File::Find>, L<pl2pm|pl2pm>,
241 L<perlbug|perlbug>, L<h2ph|h2ph>, L<c2ph|c2ph>, L<h2xs|h2xs>, L<enc2xs>,
242 L<xsubpp>, L<cpan>, L<instmodsh>, L<piconv>, L<prove>, L<corelist>, L<ptar>,
243 L<ptardiff>, L<shasum>, L<zipdetails>