=head1 NAME
-perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language
+perl - The Perl 5 language interpreter
=head1 SYNOPSIS
S<[ B<-S> ]>
S<[ B<-x>[I<dir>] ]>
S<[ B<-i>[I<extension>] ]>
- S<[
B<-e> I<'command'> ] [ B<--> ] [ I<programfile> ] [ I<argument> ]...>
+ S<[
[B<-e>|B<-E>] I<'command'> ] [ B<--> ] [ I<programfile> ] [ I<argument> ]...>
-If you're new to Perl, you should start with L<perlintro>, which is a
-general intro for beginners and provides some background to help you
-navigate the rest of Perl's extensive documentation.
+=head1 GETTING HELP
+
+The F<perldoc> program gives you access to all the documentation that comes
+with Perl. You can get more documentation, tutorials and community support
+online at L<http://www.perl.org/>.
+
+If you're new to Perl, you should start by running C<perldoc perlintro>,
+which is a general intro for beginners and provides some background to help
+you navigate the rest of Perl's extensive documentation. Run C<perldoc
+perldoc> to learn more things you can do with F<perldoc>.
For ease of access, the Perl manual has been split up into several sections.
perltooc Perl OO tutorial, part 2
perlbot Perl OO tricks and examples
+ perlperf Perl Performance and Optimization Techniques
+
perlstyle Perl style guide
perlcheat Perl cheat sheet
perlpacktut Perl pack() and unpack() tutorial
perlpod Perl plain old documentation
perlpodspec Perl plain old documentation format specification
+ perlpodstyle Perl POD style guide
perlrun Perl execution and options
perldiag Perl diagnostic messages
perllexwarn Perl warnings and their control
perlnumber Perl number semantics
perlthrtut Perl threads tutorial
- perlothrtut Old Perl threads tutorial
perlport Perl portability guide
perllocale Perl locale support
perluniintro Perl Unicode introduction
perlunicode Perl Unicode support
perlunifaq Perl Unicode FAQ
+ perluniprops Index of Unicode Version 6.0.0 properties in Perl
perlunitut Perl Unicode tutorial
perlebcdic Considerations for running Perl on EBCDIC platforms
perlclib Internal replacements for standard C library functions
perlguts Perl internal functions for those doing extensions
perlcall Perl calling conventions from C
+ perlmroapi Perl method resolution plugin interface
perlreapi Perl regular expression plugin interface
perlreguts Perl regular expression engine internals
perlapio Perl internal IO abstraction interface
perlhack Perl hackers guide
+ perlpolicy Perl development policies
+ perlrepository Perl source repository
=head2 Miscellaneous
perlhist Perl history records
perldelta Perl changes since previous version
+ perl5138delta Perl changes in version 5.13.8
+ perl5137delta Perl changes in version 5.13.7
+ perl5136delta Perl changes in version 5.13.6
+ perl5135delta Perl changes in version 5.13.5
+ perl5134delta Perl changes in version 5.13.4
+ perl5133delta Perl changes in version 5.13.3
+ perl5132delta Perl changes in version 5.13.2
+ perl5131delta Perl changes in version 5.13.1
+ perl5130delta Perl changes in version 5.13.0
+ perl5122delta Perl changes in version 5.12.2
+ perl5121delta Perl changes in version 5.12.1
+ perl5120delta Perl changes in version 5.12.0
+ perl5115delta Perl changes in version 5.11.5
+ perl5114delta Perl changes in version 5.11.4
+ perl5113delta Perl changes in version 5.11.3
+ perl5112delta Perl changes in version 5.11.2
+ perl5111delta Perl changes in version 5.11.1
+ perl5110delta Perl changes in version 5.11.0
+ perl5101delta Perl changes in version 5.10.1
perl5100delta Perl changes in version 5.10.0
perl595delta Perl changes in version 5.9.5
perl594delta Perl changes in version 5.9.4
perl592delta Perl changes in version 5.9.2
perl591delta Perl changes in version 5.9.1
perl590delta Perl changes in version 5.9.0
+ perl589delta Perl changes in version 5.8.9
perl588delta Perl changes in version 5.8.8
perl587delta Perl changes in version 5.8.7
perl586delta Perl changes in version 5.8.6
perldos Perl notes for DOS
perlepoc Perl notes for EPOC
perlfreebsd Perl notes for FreeBSD
+ perlhaiku Perl notes for Haiku
perlhpux Perl notes for HP-UX
perlhurd Perl notes for Hurd
perlirix Perl notes for Irix
perllinux Perl notes for Linux
- perlmachten Perl notes for Power MachTen
perlmacos Perl notes for Mac OS (Classic)
perlmacosx Perl notes for Mac OS X
- perlmint Perl notes for MiNT
perlmpeix Perl notes for MPE/iX
perlnetware Perl notes for NetWare
perlopenbsd Perl notes for OpenBSD
perlwin32 Perl notes for Windows
-By default, the manpages listed above are installed in the
-F</usr/local/man/> directory.
-
-Extensive additional documentation for Perl modules is available. The
-default configuration for perl will place this additional documentation
-in the F</usr/local/lib/perl5/man> directory (or else in the F<man>
-subdirectory of the Perl library directory). Some of this additional
-documentation is distributed standard with Perl, but you'll also find
-documentation for third-party modules there.
-
-You should be able to view Perl's documentation with your man(1)
-program by including the proper directories in the appropriate start-up
-files, or in the MANPATH environment variable. To find out where the
-configuration has installed the manpages, type:
-
- perl -V:man.dir
+On a Unix-like system, these documentation files will usually also be
+available as manpages for use with the F<man> program.
-If the directories have a common stem, such as F</usr/local/man/man1>
-and F</usr/local/man/man3>, you need only to add that stem
-(F</usr/local/man>) to your man(1) configuration files or your MANPATH
-environment variable. If they do not share a stem, you'll have to add
-both stems.
-
-If that doesn't work for some reason, you can still use the
-supplied F<perldoc> script to view module information. You might
-also look into getting a replacement man program.
-
-If something strange has gone wrong with your program and you're not
-sure where you should look for help, try the B<-w> switch first. It
-will often point out exactly where the trouble is.
+In general, if something strange has gone wrong with your program and you're
+not sure where you should look for help, try the B<-w> switch first. It will
+often point out exactly where the trouble is.
=head1 DESCRIPTION
-Perl is a language optimized for scanning arbitrary
+Perl officially stands for Practical Extraction and Report Language,
+except when it doesn't.
+
+Perl was originally a language optimized for scanning arbitrary
text files, extracting information from those text files, and printing
-reports based on that information. It's also a good language for many
-system management tasks. The language is intended to be practical
-(easy to use, efficient, complete) rather than beautiful (tiny,
-elegant, minimal).
+reports based on that information. It quickly became a good language
+for many system management tasks. Over the years, Perl has grown into
+a general-purpose progammming language. It's widely used for everything
+from quick "one-liners" to full-scale application development.
+
+The language is intended to be practical (easy to use, efficient,
+complete) rather than beautiful (tiny, elegant, minimal).
Perl combines (in the author's opinion, anyway) some of the best
features of C, B<sed>, B<awk>, and B<sh>, so people familiar with
"associative arrays") grow as necessary to prevent degraded
performance. Perl can use sophisticated pattern matching techniques to
scan large amounts of data quickly. Although optimized for
-scanning text, Perl can also deal with binary data, and can make dbm
-files look like hashes. Setuid Perl scripts are safer than C programs
-through a dataflow tracing mechanism that prevents many stupid
-security holes.
-
-If you have a problem that would ordinarily use B<sed> or B<awk> or
-B<sh>, but it exceeds their capabilities or must run a little faster,
-and you don't want to write the silly thing in C, then Perl may be for
-you. There are also translators to turn your B<sed> and B<awk>
-scripts into Perl scripts.
+scanning text, Perl also has many excellent tools for slicing
+and dicing binary data.
But wait, there's more...
=head1 SEE ALSO
- a2p awk to perl translator
- s2p sed to perl translator
-
http://www.perl.org/ the Perl homepage
http://www.perl.com/ Perl articles (O'Reilly)
http://www.cpan.org/ the Comprehensive Perl Archive
You may mail your bug reports (be sure to include full configuration
information as output by the myconfig program in the perl source
tree, or by C<perl -V>) to perlbug@perl.org . If you've succeeded
-in compiling perl, the
B<perlbug> script in the F<utils/> subdirectory
+in compiling perl, the
L<perlbug> script in the F<utils/> subdirectory
can be used to help mail in a bug report.
Perl actually stands for Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister, but
https://perl5.git.perl.org / perl5.git / blobdiff