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<podchecker|podchecker>
52 If you're writing your own documentation in POD, the F<podchecker>
53 utility will look for errors in your markup.
55 =item L<splain|splain>
57 F<splain> is an interface to L<perldiag> - paste in your error message
58 to it, and it'll explain it for you.
62 The C<roffitall> utility is not installed on your system but lives in
63 the F<pod/> directory of your Perl source kit; it converts all the
64 documentation from the distribution to F<*roff> format, and produces a
65 typeset PostScript or text file of the whole lot.
71 To help you convert legacy programs to more modern Perl, the
72 L<pl2pm|pl2pm> utility will help you convert old-style Perl 4 libraries
73 to new-style Perl5 modules.
79 =item L<libnetcfg|libnetcfg>
81 To display and change the libnet configuration run the libnetcfg command.
85 The F<perlivp> program is set up at Perl source code build time to test
86 the Perl version it was built under. It can be used after running C<make
87 install> (or your platform's equivalent procedure) to verify that perl
88 and its libraries have been installed correctly.
94 There are a set of utilities which help you in developing Perl programs,
95 and in particular, extending Perl with C.
99 =item L<perlbug|perlbug>
101 F<perlbug> is the recommended way to report bugs in the perl interpreter
102 itself or any of the standard library modules back to the developers;
103 please read through the documentation for F<perlbug> thoroughly before
104 using it to submit a bug report.
106 =item L<perlthanks|perlbug>
108 This program provides an easy way to send a thank-you message back to the
109 authors and maintainers of perl. It's just F<perlbug> installed under
114 Back before Perl had the XS system for connecting with C libraries,
115 programmers used to get library constants by reading through the C
116 header files. You may still see C<require 'syscall.ph'> or similar
117 around - the F<.ph> file should be created by running F<h2ph> on the
118 corresponding F<.h> file. See the F<h2ph> documentation for more on how
119 to convert a whole bunch of header files at once.
123 F<h2xs> converts C header files into XS modules, and will try and write
124 as much glue between C libraries and Perl modules as it can. It's also
125 very useful for creating skeletons of pure Perl modules.
129 F<enc2xs> builds a Perl extension for use by Encode from either
130 Unicode Character Mapping files (.ucm) or Tcl Encoding Files (.enc).
131 Besides being used internally during the build process of the Encode
132 module, you can use F<enc2xs> to add your own encoding to perl.
133 No knowledge of XS is necessary.
137 F<xsubpp> is a compiler to convert Perl XS code into C code.
138 It is typically run by the makefiles created by L<ExtUtils::MakeMaker>.
140 F<xsubpp> will compile XS code into C code by embedding the constructs
141 necessary to let C functions manipulate Perl values and creates the glue
142 necessary to let Perl access those functions.
146 F<prove> is a command-line interface to the test-running functionality
147 of F<Test::Harness>. It's an alternative to C<make test>.
151 A command-line front-end to C<Module::CoreList>, to query what modules
152 were shipped with given versions of perl.
158 A few general-purpose tools are shipped with perl, mostly because they
159 came along modules included in the perl distribution.
165 B<piconv> is a Perl version of B<iconv>, a character encoding converter
166 widely available for various Unixen today. This script was primarily a
167 technology demonstrator for Perl v5.8.0, but you can use piconv in the
168 place of iconv for virtually any case.
172 F<ptar> is a tar-like program, written in pure Perl.
176 F<ptardiff> is a small utility that produces a diff between an extracted
177 archive and an unextracted one. (Note that this utility requires the
178 C<Text::Diff> module to function properly; this module isn't distributed
179 with perl, but is available from the CPAN.)
183 F<ptargrep> is a utility to apply pattern matching to the contents of files
188 This utility, that comes with the C<Digest::SHA> module, is used to print
189 or verify SHA checksums.
193 L<zipdetails> displays information about the internal record structure of the zip file.
194 It is not concerned with displaying any details of the compressed data stored in the zip file.
200 These utilities help manage extra Perl modules that don't come with the perl
207 F<cpan> is a command-line interface to CPAN.pm. It allows you to install
208 modules or distributions from CPAN, or just get information about them, and
209 a lot more. It is similar to the command line mode of the L<CPAN> module,
215 A little interface to ExtUtils::Installed to examine installed modules,
216 validate your packlists and even create a tarball from an installed module.
222 L<perldoc|perldoc>, L<pod2man|pod2man>, L<perlpod>,
223 L<pod2html|pod2html>, L<pod2usage|pod2usage>,
224 L<podchecker|podchecker>, L<splain|splain>, L<perldiag>,
225 C<roffitall|roffitall>, L<File::Find|File::Find>, L<pl2pm|pl2pm>,
226 L<perlbug|perlbug>, L<h2ph|h2ph>, L<h2xs|h2xs>, L<enc2xs>,
227 L<xsubpp>, L<cpan>, L<instmodsh>, L<piconv>, L<prove>, L<corelist>, L<ptar>,
228 L<ptardiff>, L<shasum>, L<zipdetails>