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| 129 | .\" ======================================================================== |
| 130 | .\" |
| 131 | .IX Title "PERLDOC 1" |
| 132 | .TH PERLDOC 1 "2005-08-07" "perl v5.8.8" "Perl Programmers Reference Guide" |
| 133 | .SH "NAME" |
| 134 | perldoc \- Look up Perl documentation in Pod format. |
| 135 | .SH "SYNOPSIS" |
| 136 | .IX Header "SYNOPSIS" |
| 137 | \&\fBperldoc\fR [\fB\-h\fR] [\fB\-v\fR] [\fB\-t\fR] [\fB\-u\fR] [\fB\-m\fR] [\fB\-l\fR] [\fB\-F\fR] |
| 138 | [\fB\-i\fR] [\fB\-V\fR] [\fB\-T\fR] [\fB\-r\fR] |
| 139 | [\fB\-d\f(BIdestination_file\fB\fR] |
| 140 | [\fB\-o\f(BIformatname\fB\fR] |
| 141 | [\fB\-M\f(BIFormatterClassName\fB\fR] |
| 142 | [\fB\-w\f(BIformatteroption:value\fB\fR] |
| 143 | [\fB\-n\fR\fInroff-replacement\fR] |
| 144 | [\fB\-X\fR] |
| 145 | PageName|ModuleName|ProgramName |
| 146 | .PP |
| 147 | \&\fBperldoc\fR \fB\-f\fR BuiltinFunction |
| 148 | .PP |
| 149 | \&\fBperldoc\fR \fB\-q\fR \s-1FAQ\s0 Keyword |
| 150 | .PP |
| 151 | See below for more description of the switches. |
| 152 | .SH "DESCRIPTION" |
| 153 | .IX Header "DESCRIPTION" |
| 154 | \&\fIperldoc\fR looks up a piece of documentation in .pod format that is embedded |
| 155 | in the perl installation tree or in a perl script, and displays it via |
| 156 | \&\f(CW\*(C`pod2man | nroff \-man | $PAGER\*(C'\fR. (In addition, if running under \s-1HP\-UX\s0, |
| 157 | \&\f(CW\*(C`col \-x\*(C'\fR will be used.) This is primarily used for the documentation for |
| 158 | the perl library modules. |
| 159 | .PP |
| 160 | Your system may also have man pages installed for those modules, in |
| 161 | which case you can probably just use the \fIman\fR\|(1) command. |
| 162 | .PP |
| 163 | If you are looking for a table of contents to the Perl library modules |
| 164 | documentation, see the perltoc page. |
| 165 | .SH "OPTIONS" |
| 166 | .IX Header "OPTIONS" |
| 167 | .IP "\fB\-h\fR" 5 |
| 168 | .IX Item "-h" |
| 169 | Prints out a brief \fBh\fRelp message. |
| 170 | .IP "\fB\-v\fR" 5 |
| 171 | .IX Item "-v" |
| 172 | Describes search for the item in detail (\fBv\fRerbosely). |
| 173 | .IP "\fB\-t\fR" 5 |
| 174 | .IX Item "-t" |
| 175 | Display docs using plain \fBt\fRext converter, instead of nroff. This may be faster, |
| 176 | but it probably won't look as nice. |
| 177 | .IP "\fB\-u\fR" 5 |
| 178 | .IX Item "-u" |
| 179 | Skip the real Pod formatting, and just show the raw Pod source (\fBU\fRnformatted) |
| 180 | .IP "\fB\-m\fR \fImodule\fR" 5 |
| 181 | .IX Item "-m module" |
| 182 | Display the entire module: both code and unformatted pod documentation. |
| 183 | This may be useful if the docs don't explain a function in the detail |
| 184 | you need, and you'd like to inspect the code directly; perldoc will find |
| 185 | the file for you and simply hand it off for display. |
| 186 | .IP "\fB\-l\fR" 5 |
| 187 | .IX Item "-l" |
| 188 | Display on\fBl\fRy the file name of the module found. |
| 189 | .IP "\fB\-F\fR" 5 |
| 190 | .IX Item "-F" |
| 191 | Consider arguments as file names; no search in directories will be performed. |
| 192 | .IP "\fB\-f\fR \fIperlfunc\fR" 5 |
| 193 | .IX Item "-f perlfunc" |
| 194 | The \fB\-f\fR option followed by the name of a perl built in function will |
| 195 | extract the documentation of this function from perlfunc. |
| 196 | .Sp |
| 197 | Example: |
| 198 | .Sp |
| 199 | .Vb 1 |
| 200 | \& perldoc -f sprintf |
| 201 | .Ve |
| 202 | .IP "\fB\-q\fR \fIperlfaq-search-regexp\fR" 5 |
| 203 | .IX Item "-q perlfaq-search-regexp" |
| 204 | The \fB\-q\fR option takes a regular expression as an argument. It will search |
| 205 | the \fBq\fRuestion headings in perlfaq[1\-9] and print the entries matching |
| 206 | the regular expression. Example: \f(CW\*(C`perldoc \-q shuffle\*(C'\fR |
| 207 | .IP "\fB\-T\fR" 5 |
| 208 | .IX Item "-T" |
| 209 | This specifies that the output is not to be sent to a pager, but is to |
| 210 | be sent right to \s-1STDOUT\s0. |
| 211 | .IP "\fB\-d\fR \fIdestination-filename\fR" 5 |
| 212 | .IX Item "-d destination-filename" |
| 213 | This specifies that the output is to be sent neither to a pager nor |
| 214 | to \s-1STDOUT\s0, but is to be saved to the specified filename. Example: |
| 215 | \&\f(CW\*(C`perldoc \-oLaTeX \-dtextwrapdocs.tex Text::Wrap\*(C'\fR |
| 216 | .IP "\fB\-o\fR \fIoutput-formatname\fR" 5 |
| 217 | .IX Item "-o output-formatname" |
| 218 | This specifies that you want Perldoc to try using a Pod-formatting |
| 219 | class for the output format that you specify. For example: |
| 220 | \&\f(CW\*(C`\-oman\*(C'\fR. This is actually just a wrapper around the \f(CW\*(C`\-M\*(C'\fR switch; |
| 221 | using \f(CW\*(C`\-o\f(CIformatname\f(CW\*(C'\fR just looks for a loadable class by adding |
| 222 | that format name (with different capitalizations) to the end of |
| 223 | different classname prefixes. |
| 224 | .Sp |
| 225 | For example, \f(CW\*(C`\-oLaTeX\*(C'\fR currently tries all of the following classes: |
| 226 | Pod::Perldoc::ToLaTeX Pod::Perldoc::Tolatex Pod::Perldoc::ToLatex |
| 227 | Pod::Perldoc::ToLATEX Pod::Simple::LaTeX Pod::Simple::latex |
| 228 | Pod::Simple::Latex Pod::Simple::LATEX Pod::LaTeX Pod::latex Pod::Latex |
| 229 | Pod::LATEX. |
| 230 | .IP "\fB\-M\fR \fImodule-name\fR" 5 |
| 231 | .IX Item "-M module-name" |
| 232 | This specifies the module that you want to try using for formatting the |
| 233 | pod. The class must at least provide a \f(CW\*(C`parse_from_file\*(C'\fR method. |
| 234 | For example: \f(CW\*(C`perldoc \-MPod::Perldoc::ToChecker\*(C'\fR. |
| 235 | .Sp |
| 236 | You can specify several classes to try by joining them with commas |
| 237 | or semicolons, as in \f(CW\*(C`\-MTk::SuperPod;Tk::Pod\*(C'\fR. |
| 238 | .IP "\fB\-w\fR \fIoption:value\fR or \fB\-w\fR \fIoption\fR" 5 |
| 239 | .IX Item "-w option:value or -w option" |
| 240 | This specifies an option to call the formatter \fBw\fRith. For example, |
| 241 | \&\f(CW\*(C`\-w textsize:15\*(C'\fR will call |
| 242 | \&\f(CW\*(C`$formatter\->textsize(15)\*(C'\fR on the formatter object before it is |
| 243 | used to format the object. For this to be valid, the formatter class |
| 244 | must provide such a method, and the value you pass should be valid. |
| 245 | (So if \f(CW\*(C`textsize\*(C'\fR expects an integer, and you do \f(CW\*(C`\-w textsize:big\*(C'\fR, |
| 246 | expect trouble.) |
| 247 | .Sp |
| 248 | You can use \f(CW\*(C`\-w optionname\*(C'\fR (without a value) as shorthand for |
| 249 | \&\f(CW\*(C`\-w optionname:\f(CI\s-1TRUE\s0\f(CW\*(C'\fR. This is presumably useful in cases of on/off |
| 250 | features like: \f(CW\*(C`\-w page_numbering\*(C'\fR. |
| 251 | .Sp |
| 252 | You can use a \*(L"=\*(R" instead of the \*(L":\*(R", as in: \f(CW\*(C`\-w textsize=15\*(C'\fR. This |
| 253 | might be more (or less) convenient, depending on what shell you use. |
| 254 | .IP "\fB\-X\fR" 5 |
| 255 | .IX Item "-X" |
| 256 | Use an index if it is present \*(-- the \fB\-X\fR option looks for an entry |
| 257 | whose basename matches the name given on the command line in the file |
| 258 | \&\f(CW\*(C`$Config{archlib}/pod.idx\*(C'\fR. The \fIpod.idx\fR file should contain fully |
| 259 | qualified filenames, one per line. |
| 260 | .IP "\fBPageName|ModuleName|ProgramName\fR" 5 |
| 261 | .IX Item "PageName|ModuleName|ProgramName" |
| 262 | The item you want to look up. Nested modules (such as \f(CW\*(C`File::Basename\*(C'\fR) |
| 263 | are specified either as \f(CW\*(C`File::Basename\*(C'\fR or \f(CW\*(C`File/Basename\*(C'\fR. You may also |
| 264 | give a descriptive name of a page, such as \f(CW\*(C`perlfunc\*(C'\fR. |
| 265 | .IP "\fB\-n\fR \fIsome-formatter\fR" 5 |
| 266 | .IX Item "-n some-formatter" |
| 267 | Specify replacement for nroff |
| 268 | .IP "\fB\-r\fR" 5 |
| 269 | .IX Item "-r" |
| 270 | Recursive search. |
| 271 | .IP "\fB\-i\fR" 5 |
| 272 | .IX Item "-i" |
| 273 | Ignore case. |
| 274 | .IP "\fB\-V\fR" 5 |
| 275 | .IX Item "-V" |
| 276 | Displays the version of perldoc you're running. |
| 277 | .SH "SECURITY" |
| 278 | .IX Header "SECURITY" |
| 279 | Because \fBperldoc\fR does not run properly tainted, and is known to |
| 280 | have security issues, when run as the superuser it will attempt to |
| 281 | drop privileges by setting the effective and real IDs to nobody's |
| 282 | or nouser's account, or \-2 if unavailable. If it cannot relinquish |
| 283 | its privileges, it will not run. |
| 284 | .SH "ENVIRONMENT" |
| 285 | .IX Header "ENVIRONMENT" |
| 286 | Any switches in the \f(CW\*(C`PERLDOC\*(C'\fR environment variable will be used before the |
| 287 | command line arguments. |
| 288 | .PP |
| 289 | Useful values for \f(CW\*(C`PERLDOC\*(C'\fR include \f(CW\*(C`\-oman\*(C'\fR, \f(CW\*(C`\-otext\*(C'\fR, \f(CW\*(C`\-otk\*(C'\fR, \f(CW\*(C`\-ortf\*(C'\fR, |
| 290 | \&\f(CW\*(C`\-oxml\*(C'\fR, and so on, depending on what modules you have on hand; or |
| 291 | exactly specify the formatter class with \f(CW\*(C`\-MPod::Perldoc::ToMan\*(C'\fR |
| 292 | or the like. |
| 293 | .PP |
| 294 | \&\f(CW\*(C`perldoc\*(C'\fR also searches directories |
| 295 | specified by the \f(CW\*(C`PERL5LIB\*(C'\fR (or \f(CW\*(C`PERLLIB\*(C'\fR if \f(CW\*(C`PERL5LIB\*(C'\fR is not |
| 296 | defined) and \f(CW\*(C`PATH\*(C'\fR environment variables. |
| 297 | (The latter is so that embedded pods for executables, such as |
| 298 | \&\f(CW\*(C`perldoc\*(C'\fR itself, are available.) |
| 299 | .PP |
| 300 | \&\f(CW\*(C`perldoc\*(C'\fR will use, in order of preference, the pager defined in |
| 301 | \&\f(CW\*(C`PERLDOC_PAGER\*(C'\fR, \f(CW\*(C`MANPAGER\*(C'\fR, or \f(CW\*(C`PAGER\*(C'\fR before trying to find a pager |
| 302 | on its own. (\f(CW\*(C`MANPAGER\*(C'\fR is not used if \f(CW\*(C`perldoc\*(C'\fR was told to display |
| 303 | plain text or unformatted pod.) |
| 304 | .PP |
| 305 | One useful value for \f(CW\*(C`PERLDOC_PAGER\*(C'\fR is \f(CW\*(C`less \-+C \-E\*(C'\fR. |
| 306 | .PP |
| 307 | Having \s-1PERLDOCDEBUG\s0 set to a positive integer will make perldoc emit |
| 308 | even more descriptive output than the \f(CW\*(C`\-v\*(C'\fR switch does \*(-- the higher the |
| 309 | number, the more it emits. |
| 310 | .SH "AUTHOR" |
| 311 | .IX Header "AUTHOR" |
| 312 | Current maintainer: Sean M. Burke, <sburke@cpan.org> |
| 313 | .PP |
| 314 | Past contributors are: |
| 315 | Kenneth Albanowski <kjahds@kjahds.com>, |
| 316 | Andy Dougherty <doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu>, |
| 317 | and many others. |