=head1 NAME
-perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language
+perl - The Perl 5 language interpreter
=head1 SYNOPSIS
S<[ B<-i>[I<extension>] ]>
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.
+For more information on these options, you can run C<perldoc perlrun>.
+
+=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.
+=begin buildtoc
+
+# This section is parsed by Porting/pod_lib.pl for use by pod/buildtoc etc
+
+flag =g perluniprops perlmodlib perlapi perlintern
+flag =go perltoc
+flag =ro perlcn perljp perlko perltw
+flag = perlvms
+
+path perlfaq.* cpan/perlfaq/lib/
+path perlglossary cpan/perlfaq/lib/
+path perlxs(?:tut|typemap)? dist/ExtUtils-ParseXS/lib/
+path perldoc cpan/Pod-Perldoc/lib/
+
+aux a2p c2ph h2ph h2xs perlbug pl2pm pod2html pod2man s2p splain xsubpp
+
+=end buildtoc
+
=head2 Overview
perl Perl overview (this section)
perlintro Perl introduction for beginners
+ perlrun Perl execution and options
perltoc Perl documentation table of contents
=head2 Tutorials
perlrequick Perl regular expressions quick start
perlretut Perl regular expressions tutorial
- perlboot Perl OO tutorial for beginners
- perltoot Perl OO tutorial, part 1
- perltooc Perl OO tutorial, part 2
- perlbot Perl OO tricks and examples
+ perlootut Perl OO tutorial for beginners
perlperf Perl Performance and Optimization Techniques
perlpacktut Perl pack() and unpack() tutorial
perlpod Perl plain old documentation
perlpodspec Perl plain old documentation format specification
- perlrun Perl execution and options
+ perlpodstyle Perl POD style guide
perldiag Perl diagnostic messages
perllexwarn Perl warnings and their control
perldebug Perl debugging
perluniintro Perl Unicode introduction
perlunicode Perl Unicode support
perlunifaq Perl Unicode FAQ
+ perluniprops Index of Unicode properties in Perl
perlunitut Perl Unicode tutorial
perlebcdic Considerations for running Perl on EBCDIC platforms
perlutil utilities packaged with the Perl distribution
- perlcompile Perl compiler suite intro
-
perlfilter Perl source filters
+ perldtrace Perl's support for DTrace
+
perlglossary Perl Glossary
=head2 Internals and C Language Interface
perldebguts Perl debugging guts and tips
perlxstut Perl XS tutorial
perlxs Perl XS application programming interface
+ perlxstypemap Perl XS C/Perl type conversion tools
perlclib Internal replacements for standard C library functions
perlguts Perl internal functions for those doing extensions
perlcall Perl calling conventions from C
perlapio Perl internal IO abstraction interface
perlhack Perl hackers guide
+ perlsource Guide to the Perl source tree
+ perlinterp Overview of the Perl interpreter source and how it works
+ perlhacktut Walk through the creation of a simple C code patch
+ perlhacktips Tips for Perl core C code hacking
perlpolicy Perl development policies
- perlrepository Perl source repository
+ perlgit Using git with the Perl repository
=head2 Miscellaneous
perlbook Perl book information
perlcommunity Perl community information
- perltodo Perl things to do
perldoc Look up Perl documentation in Pod format
perlhist Perl history records
perldelta Perl changes since previous version
- perl5110delta Perl changes in version 5.11.0
+ perl5175delta Perl changes in version 5.17.5
+ perl5174delta Perl changes in version 5.17.4
+ perl5173delta Perl changes in version 5.17.3
+ perl5172delta Perl changes in version 5.17.2
+ perl5171delta Perl changes in version 5.17.1
+ perl5170delta Perl changes in version 5.17.0
+ perl5161delta Perl changes in version 5.16.1
+ perl5162delta Perl changes in version 5.16.2
+ perl5160delta Perl changes in version 5.16.0
+ perl5143delta Perl changes in version 5.14.3
+ perl5142delta Perl changes in version 5.14.2
+ perl5141delta Perl changes in version 5.14.1
+ perl5140delta Perl changes in version 5.14.0
+ perl5124delta Perl changes in version 5.12.4
+ perl5123delta Perl changes in version 5.12.3
+ perl5122delta Perl changes in version 5.12.2
+ perl5121delta Perl changes in version 5.12.1
+ perl5120delta Perl changes in version 5.12.0
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
- perl593delta Perl changes in version 5.9.3
- 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
perl582delta Perl changes in version 5.8.2
perl581delta Perl changes in version 5.8.1
perl58delta Perl changes in version 5.8.0
- perl573delta Perl changes in version 5.7.3
- perl572delta Perl changes in version 5.7.2
- perl571delta Perl changes in version 5.7.1
- perl570delta Perl changes in version 5.7.0
perl561delta Perl changes in version 5.6.1
perl56delta Perl changes in version 5.6
perl5005delta Perl changes in version 5.005
perl5004delta Perl changes in version 5.004
+ perlexperiment A listing of experimental features in Perl
+
perlartistic Perl Artistic License
perlgpl GNU General Public License
=head2 Language-Specific
+=for buildtoc flag +r
+
perlcn Perl for Simplified Chinese (in EUC-CN)
perljp Perl for Japanese (in EUC-JP)
perlko Perl for Korean (in EUC-KR)
perlaix Perl notes for AIX
perlamiga Perl notes for AmigaOS
- perlapollo Perl notes for Apollo DomainOS
perlbeos Perl notes for BeOS
perlbs2000 Perl notes for POSIX-BC BS2000
perlce Perl notes for WinCE
perllinux Perl notes for Linux
perlmacos Perl notes for Mac OS (Classic)
perlmacosx Perl notes for Mac OS X
- perlmpeix Perl notes for MPE/iX
perlnetware Perl notes for NetWare
perlopenbsd Perl notes for OpenBSD
perlos2 Perl notes for OS/2
perlsolaris Perl notes for Solaris
perlsymbian Perl notes for Symbian
perltru64 Perl notes for Tru64
- perluts Perl notes for UTS
- perlvmesa Perl notes for VM/ESA
perlvms Perl notes for VMS
perlvos Perl notes for Stratus VOS
perlwin32 Perl notes for Windows
+=for buildtoc flag -r
-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:
+=head2 Stubs for Deleted Documents
- perl -V:man.dir
+ perlboot
+ perlbot
+ perltodo
+ perltooc
+ perltoot
-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.
+=for buildtoc __END__
-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.
+On a Unix-like system, these documentation files will usually also be
+available as manpages for use with the F<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 making your code comply with
+B<use strict> and B<use warnings>. These 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 programming 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...
embeddable and extensible
-Described in L<perlembed>, L<perlxstut>, L<perlxs>, L<perlcall>,
-L<perlguts>, and L<xsubpp>.
+Described in L<perlembed>, L<perlxstut>, L<perlxs>, L<perlxstypemap>,
+L<perlcall>, L<perlguts>, and L<xsubpp>.
=item *
object-oriented programming
-Described in L<perlobj>, L<perlboot>, L<perltoot>, L<perltooc>,
-and L<perlbot>.
+Described in L<perlobj> and L<perlootut>.
=item *
=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
=head1 DIAGNOSTICS
-The C<use warnings> pragma (and the B<-w> switch) produces some
-lovely diagnostics.
+Using the C<use strict> pragma ensures that all variables are properly
+declared and prevents other misuses of legacy Perl features.
+
+The C<use warnings> pragma produces some lovely diagnostics. One can
+also use the B<-w> flag, but its use is normally discouraged, because
+it gets applied to all executed Perl code, including that not under
+your control.
See L<perldiag> for explanations of all Perl's diagnostics. The C<use
diagnostics> pragma automatically turns Perl's normally terse warnings
Setuid scripts have additional constraints that can produce error
messages such as "Insecure dependency". See L<perlsec>.
-Did we mention that you should definitely consider using the B<-w>
-switch?
+Did we mention that you should definitely consider using the B<use warnings>
+pragma?
=head1 BUGS
-The B<-w> switch is not mandatory.
+The behavior implied by the B<use warnings> pragma is not mandatory.
Perl is at the mercy of your machine's definitions of various
operations such as type casting, atof(), and floating-point
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