MirBSD manpage: perldoc(1)

PERLDOC(1)      Perl Programmers Reference Guide       PERLDOC(1)

NAME

     perldoc - Look up Perl documentation in Pod format.

SYNOPSIS

     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.

DESCRIPTION

     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.

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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     -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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