PERLDOC(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLDOC(1)NAMEperldoc - Look up Perl documentation in Pod format.
SYNOPSISperldoc [-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.
DESCRIPTIONperldoc 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.
OPTIONS-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
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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 func-
tion from perlfunc.
Example:
perldoc-f sprintf
-q perlfaq-search-regexp
The -q option takes a regular expression as an argu-
ment. 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 speci-
fied 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 fol-
lowing 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 at least pro-
vide 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".
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PERLDOC(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLDOC(1)-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 short-
hand for "-w optionname:TRUE". This is presumably use-
ful 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.
SECURITY
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.
ENVIRONMENT
Any switches in the "PERLDOC" environment variable will be
used before the command line arguments.
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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 embed-
ded 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.
AUTHOR
Current maintainer: Sean M. Burke, <sburke@cpan.org>
Past contributors are: Kenneth Albanowski
<kjahds@kjahds.com>, Andy Dougherty
<doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu>, and many others.
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