perldoc - Look up Perl documentation in Pod format.
perldoc [-h] [-v] [-t] [-u] [-m] [-l] [-F] [-i] [-V] [-T]
[-r] [-ddestination_file] [-oformatname] [-MFormatter-
ClassName] [-wformatteroption:value] [-nnroff-replacement]
[-X] PageName|ModuleName|ProgramName
perldoc -f BuiltinFunction
perldoc -q FAQ Keyword
See below for more description of the switches.
perldoc looks up a piece of documentation in .pod format
that is embedded in the perl installation tree or in a
perl script, and displays it via "pod2man | nroff -man |
$PAGER". (In addition, if running under HP-UX, "col -x"
will be used.) 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.
-h Prints out a brief help message.
-v Describes search for the item in detail (verbosely).
-t Display docs using plain text converter, instead of
nroff. This may be faster, but it probably won't look
as nice.
-u Skip the real Pod formatting, and just show the raw
Pod source (Unformatted)
-m module
Display the entire module: both code and unformatted
pod documentation. This may be useful if the docs
don't explain a function in the detail you need, and
you'd like to inspect the code directly; perldoc will
find the file for you and simply hand it off for display.
-l Display only the file name of the module found.
-F Consider arguments as file names; no search in directories
will be performed.
-f perlfunc
The -f option followed by the name of a perl built in
function will extract the documentation of this function
from perlfunc.
Example:
perldoc -f sprintf
-q perlfaq-search-regexp
The -q option takes a regular expression as an argument.
It will search the question headings in perlfaq[1-9]
and print the entries matching the regular
expression. Example: "perldoc -q shuffle"
-T This specifies that the output is not to be sent to a
pager, but is to be sent right to STDOUT.
-d destination-filename
This specifies that the output is to be sent neither
to a pager nor to STDOUT, but is to be saved to the
specified filename. Example: "perldoc -oLaTeX -dtextwrapdocs.tex
Text::Wrap"
-o output-formatname
This specifies that you want Perldoc to try using a
Pod-formatting class for the output format that you
specify. For example: "-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.
-M module-name
This specifies the module that you want to try using
for formatting the pod. The class must must at least
provide a "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 option:value or -w option
This specifies an option to call the formatter with.
For example, "-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 a "=" instead of the ":", as in: "-w
textsize=15". This might be more (or less) convenient,
depending on what shell you use.
-X Use an index if it is present -- the -X option looks
for an entry whose basename matches the name given on
the command line in the file "$Config{archlib}/pod.idx".
The pod.idx file should contain fully
qualified filenames, one per line.
PageName|ModuleName|ProgramName
The item you want to look up. Nested modules (such
as "File::Basename") are specified either as
"File::Basename" or "File/Basename". You may also
give a descriptive name of a page, such as "perlfunc".
-n some-formatter
Specify replacement for nroff
-r Recursive search.
-i Ignore case.
-V Displays the version of perldoc you're running.
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.
Any switches in the "PERLDOC" environment variable will be
used before the command line arguments.
Useful values for "PERLDOC" include "-oman", "-otext",
"-otk", "-ortf", "-oxml", and so on, depending on what
modules you have on hand; or exactly specify the formatter
class with "-MPod::Perldoc::ToMan" 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.)
"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.)
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 "-v"
switch does -- the higher the number, the more it emits.
Current maintainer: Sean M. Burke, <[email protected]>
Past contributors are: Kenneth Albanowski
<[email protected]>, Andy Dougherty <[email protected]>,
and many others.
perl v5.8.5 2002-11-06 4 [ Back ] |
