PERLDOC(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLDOC(1)NAMEperldoc - Look up Perl documentation in pod format.
SYNOPSISperldoc [-h] [-v] [-t] [-u] [-m] [-l] [-F] [-X] Page
Name|ModuleName|ProgramName
perldoc-f BuiltinFunction
perldoc-q FAQ Keyword
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 |
$PAGER". (In addition, if running under HP-UX, "col -x"
will be used.) This is primarily used for the documenta
tion for the perl library modules.
Your system may also have man pages installed for those
modules, in which case you can probably just use the
man(1) command.
OPTIONS-h help
Prints out a brief help message.
-v verbose
Describes search for the item in detail.
-t text output
Display docs using plain text converter, instead of
nroff. This may be faster, but it won't look as nice.
-u unformatted
Find docs only; skip reformatting by pod2*
-m module
Display the entire module: both code and unformatted
pod documentation. This may be useful if the docs
don't explain a function in the detail you need, and
you'd like to inspect the code directly; perldoc will
find the file for you and simply hand it off for dis
play.
-l file name only
Display the file name of the module found.
-F file names
Consider arguments as file names, no search in direc
tories will be performed.
-f perlfunc
The -f option followed by the name of a perl built in
function will extract the documentation of this func
tion from the perlfunc manpage.
-q perlfaq
The -q option takes a regular expression as an argu
ment. It will search the question headings in perl
faq[1-9] and print the entries matching the regular
expression.
-X use an index if present
The -X option looks for a entry whose basename
matches the name given on the command line in the
file "$Config{archlib}/pod.idx". The pod.idx file
should contain fully qualified filenames, one per
line.
-U run insecurely
Because perldoc does not run properly tainted, and is
known to have security issues, it will not normally
execute as the superuser. If you use the -U flag, it
will do so, but only after setting the effective and
real IDs to nobody's or nouser's account, or -2 if
unavailable. If it cannot relinguish its privileges,
it will not run.
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 "perl
func". You may also give a partial or wrong-case
name, such as "basename" for "File::Basename", but
this will be slower, if there is more then one page
with the same partial name, you will only get the
first one.
ENVIRONMENT
Any switches in the "PERLDOC" environment variable will be
used before the command line arguments. "perldoc" also
searches directories specified by the "PERL5LIB" (or "PER
LLIB" if "PERL5LIB" is not defined) and "PATH" environment
variables. (The latter is so that embedded pods for exe
cutables, 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 unfor
matted pod.)
One useful value for "PERLDOC_PAGER" is "less -+C -E".
VERSION
This is perldoc v2.03.
AUTHOR
Kenneth Albanowski <kjahds@kjahds.com>
Minor updates by Andy Dougherty <doughera@laf
col.lafayette.edu>, and others.
2002-06-25 perl v5.6.1 PERLDOC(1)
