3 perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language
7 B<perl> S<[ B<-sTuU> ]> S<[ B<-hv> ] [ B<-V>[:I<configvar>] ]>
8 S<[ B<-cw> ] [ B<-d>[:I<debugger>] ] [ B<-D>[I<number/list>] ]>
9 S<[ B<-pna> ] [ B<-F>I<pattern> ] [ B<-l>[I<octal>] ] [ B<-0>[I<octal>] ]>
10 S<[ B<-I>I<dir> ] [ B<-m>[B<->]I<module> ] [ B<-M>[B<->]I<'module...'> ]>
11 S<[ B<-P> ]> S<[ B<-S> ]> S<[ B<-x>[I<dir>] ]>
12 S<[ B<-i>[I<extension>] ]> S<[ B<-e> I<'command'> ]
13 [ B<--> ] [ I<programfile> ] [ I<argument> ]...>
15 If you're new to Perl, you should start with L<perlintro>, which is a
16 general intro for beginners and provides some background to help you
17 navigate the rest of Perl's extensive documentation.
19 For ease of access, the Perl manual has been split up into several sections.
23 perl Perl overview (this section)
24 perlintro Perl introduction for beginners
25 perltoc Perl documentation table of contents
29 perlreftut Perl references short introduction
30 perldsc Perl data structures intro
31 perllol Perl data structures: arrays of arrays
33 perlrequick Perl regular expressions quick start
34 perlretut Perl regular expressions tutorial
36 perlboot Perl OO tutorial for beginners
37 perltoot Perl OO tutorial, part 1
38 perltooc Perl OO tutorial, part 2
39 perlbot Perl OO tricks and examples
41 perlstyle Perl style guide
43 perltrap Perl traps for the unwary
44 perldebtut Perl debugging tutorial
46 perlfaq Perl frequently asked questions
47 perlfaq1 General Questions About Perl
48 perlfaq2 Obtaining and Learning about Perl
49 perlfaq3 Programming Tools
50 perlfaq4 Data Manipulation
51 perlfaq5 Files and Formats
53 perlfaq7 Perl Language Issues
54 perlfaq8 System Interaction
57 =head2 Reference Manual
60 perldata Perl data structures
61 perlop Perl operators and precedence
62 perlsub Perl subroutines
63 perlfunc Perl built-in functions
64 perlopentut Perl open() tutorial
65 perlpacktut Perl pack() and unpack() tutorial
66 perlpod Perl plain old documentation
67 perlpodspec Perl plain old documentation format specification
68 perlrun Perl execution and options
69 perldiag Perl diagnostic messages
70 perllexwarn Perl warnings and their control
71 perldebug Perl debugging
72 perlvar Perl predefined variables
73 perlre Perl regular expressions, the rest of the story
74 perlref Perl references, the rest of the story
77 perltie Perl objects hidden behind simple variables
78 perldbmfilter Perl DBM filters
80 perlipc Perl interprocess communication
81 perlfork Perl fork() information
82 perlnumber Perl number semantics
84 perlthrtut Perl threads tutorial
85 perlothrtut Old Perl threads tutorial
87 perlport Perl portability guide
88 perllocale Perl locale support
89 perluniintro Perl Unicode introduction
90 perlunicode Perl Unicode support
91 perlebcdic Considerations for running Perl on EBCDIC platforms
95 perlmod Perl modules: how they work
96 perlmodlib Perl modules: how to write and use
97 perlmodstyle Perl modules: how to write modules with style
98 perlmodinstall Perl modules: how to install from CPAN
99 perlnewmod Perl modules: preparing a new module for distribution
101 perlutil utilities packaged with the Perl distribution
103 perlcompile Perl compiler suite intro
105 perlfilter Perl source filters
107 =head2 Internals and C Language Interface
109 perlembed Perl ways to embed perl in your C or C++ application
110 perldebguts Perl debugging guts and tips
111 perlxstut Perl XS tutorial
112 perlxs Perl XS application programming interface
113 perlclib Internal replacements for standard C library functions
114 perlguts Perl internal functions for those doing extensions
115 perlcall Perl calling conventions from C
117 perlapi Perl API listing (autogenerated)
118 perlintern Perl internal functions (autogenerated)
119 perliol C API for Perl's implementation of IO in Layers
120 perlapio Perl internal IO abstraction interface
122 perlhack Perl hackers guide
126 perlbook Perl book information
127 perltodo Perl things to do
129 perlhist Perl history records
130 perldelta Perl changes since previous version
131 perl572delta Perl changes in version 5.7.2
132 perl571delta Perl changes in version 5.7.1
133 perl570delta Perl changes in version 5.7.0
134 perl561delta Perl changes in version 5.6.1
135 perl56delta Perl changes in version 5.6
136 perl5005delta Perl changes in version 5.005
137 perl5004delta Perl changes in version 5.004
139 =head2 Language-Specific
141 perlcn Perl for Simplified Chinese (in EUC-CN)
142 perljp Perl for Japanese (in EUC-JP)
143 perlko Perl for Korean (in EUC-KR)
144 perltw Perl for Traditional Chinese (in Big5)
146 =head2 Platform-Specific
148 perlaix Perl notes for AIX
149 perlamiga Perl notes for AmigaOS
150 perlapollo Perl notes for Apollo DomainOS
151 perlbeos Perl notes for BeOS
152 perlbs2000 Perl notes for POSIX-BC BS2000
153 perlce Perl notes for WinCE
154 perlcygwin Perl notes for Cygwin
155 perldgux Perl notes for DG/UX
156 perldos Perl notes for DOS
157 perlepoc Perl notes for EPOC
158 perlfreebsd Perl notes for FreeBSD
159 perlhpux Perl notes for HP-UX
160 perlhurd Perl notes for Hurd
161 perlirix Perl notes for Irix
162 perlmachten Perl notes for Power MachTen
163 perlmacos Perl notes for Mac OS (Classic)
164 perlmint Perl notes for MiNT
165 perlmpeix Perl notes for MPE/iX
166 perlnetware Perl notes for NetWare
167 perlos2 Perl notes for OS/2
168 perlos390 Perl notes for OS/390
169 perlos400 Perl notes for OS/400
170 perlplan9 Perl notes for Plan 9
171 perlqnx Perl notes for QNX
172 perlsolaris Perl notes for Solaris
173 perltru64 Perl notes for Tru64
174 perluts Perl notes for UTS
175 perlvmesa Perl notes for VM/ESA
176 perlvms Perl notes for VMS
177 perlvos Perl notes for Stratus VOS
178 perlwin32 Perl notes for Windows
181 By default, the manpages listed above are installed in the
182 F</usr/local/man/> directory.
184 Extensive additional documentation for Perl modules is available. The
185 default configuration for perl will place this additional documentation
186 in the F</usr/local/lib/perl5/man> directory (or else in the F<man>
187 subdirectory of the Perl library directory). Some of this additional
188 documentation is distributed standard with Perl, but you'll also find
189 documentation for third-party modules there.
191 You should be able to view Perl's documentation with your man(1)
192 program by including the proper directories in the appropriate start-up
193 files, or in the MANPATH environment variable. To find out where the
194 configuration has installed the manpages, type:
198 If the directories have a common stem, such as F</usr/local/man/man1>
199 and F</usr/local/man/man3>, you need only to add that stem
200 (F</usr/local/man>) to your man(1) configuration files or your MANPATH
201 environment variable. If they do not share a stem, you'll have to add
204 If that doesn't work for some reason, you can still use the
205 supplied F<perldoc> script to view module information. You might
206 also look into getting a replacement man program.
208 If something strange has gone wrong with your program and you're not
209 sure where you should look for help, try the B<-w> switch first. It
210 will often point out exactly where the trouble is.
214 Perl is a language optimized for scanning arbitrary
215 text files, extracting information from those text files, and printing
216 reports based on that information. It's also a good language for many
217 system management tasks. The language is intended to be practical
218 (easy to use, efficient, complete) rather than beautiful (tiny,
221 Perl combines (in the author's opinion, anyway) some of the best
222 features of C, B<sed>, B<awk>, and B<sh>, so people familiar with
223 those languages should have little difficulty with it. (Language
224 historians will also note some vestiges of B<csh>, Pascal, and even
225 BASIC-PLUS.) Expression syntax corresponds closely to C
226 expression syntax. Unlike most Unix utilities, Perl does not
227 arbitrarily limit the size of your data--if you've got the memory,
228 Perl can slurp in your whole file as a single string. Recursion is of
229 unlimited depth. And the tables used by hashes (sometimes called
230 "associative arrays") grow as necessary to prevent degraded
231 performance. Perl can use sophisticated pattern matching techniques to
232 scan large amounts of data quickly. Although optimized for
233 scanning text, Perl can also deal with binary data, and can make dbm
234 files look like hashes. Setuid Perl scripts are safer than C programs
235 through a dataflow tracing mechanism that prevents many stupid
238 If you have a problem that would ordinarily use B<sed> or B<awk> or
239 B<sh>, but it exceeds their capabilities or must run a little faster,
240 and you don't want to write the silly thing in C, then Perl may be for
241 you. There are also translators to turn your B<sed> and B<awk>
242 scripts into Perl scripts.
244 But wait, there's more...
246 Begun in 1993 (see L<perlhist>), Perl version 5 is nearly a complete
247 rewrite that provides the following additional benefits:
253 modularity and reusability using innumerable modules
255 Described in L<perlmod>, L<perlmodlib>, and L<perlmodinstall>.
259 embeddable and extensible
261 Described in L<perlembed>, L<perlxstut>, L<perlxs>, L<perlcall>,
262 L<perlguts>, and L<xsubpp>.
266 roll-your-own magic variables (including multiple simultaneous DBM
269 Described in L<perltie> and L<AnyDBM_File>.
273 subroutines can now be overridden, autoloaded, and prototyped
275 Described in L<perlsub>.
279 arbitrarily nested data structures and anonymous functions
281 Described in L<perlreftut>, L<perlref>, L<perldsc>, and L<perllol>.
285 object-oriented programming
287 Described in L<perlobj>, L<perlboot>, L<perltoot>, L<perltooc>,
292 support for light-weight processes (threads)
294 Described in L<perlthrtut> and L<threads>.
298 support for Unicode, internationalization, and localization
300 Described in L<perluniintro>, L<perllocale> and L<Locale::Maketext>.
306 Described in L<perlsub>.
310 regular expression enhancements
312 Described in L<perlre>, with additional examples in L<perlop>.
316 enhanced debugger and interactive Perl environment,
317 with integrated editor support
319 Described in L<perldebtut>, L<perldebug> and L<perldebguts>.
323 POSIX 1003.1 compliant library
325 Described in L<POSIX>.
329 Okay, that's I<definitely> enough hype.
333 Perl is available for most operating systems, including virtually
334 all Unix-like platforms. See L<perlport/"Supported Platforms">
343 Larry Wall <larry@wall.org>, with the help of oodles of other folks.
345 If your Perl success stories and testimonials may be of help to others
346 who wish to advocate the use of Perl in their applications,
347 or if you wish to simply express your gratitude to Larry and the
348 Perl developers, please write to perl-thanks@perl.org .
352 "@INC" locations of perl libraries
356 a2p awk to perl translator
357 s2p sed to perl translator
359 http://www.perl.com/ the Perl Home Page
360 http://www.cpan.org/ the Comprehensive Perl Archive
361 http://www.perl.org/ Perl Mongers (Perl user groups)
365 The C<use warnings> pragma (and the B<-w> switch) produces some
368 See L<perldiag> for explanations of all Perl's diagnostics. The C<use
369 diagnostics> pragma automatically turns Perl's normally terse warnings
370 and errors into these longer forms.
372 Compilation errors will tell you the line number of the error, with an
373 indication of the next token or token type that was to be examined.
374 (In a script passed to Perl via B<-e> switches, each
375 B<-e> is counted as one line.)
377 Setuid scripts have additional constraints that can produce error
378 messages such as "Insecure dependency". See L<perlsec>.
380 Did we mention that you should definitely consider using the B<-w>
385 The B<-w> switch is not mandatory.
387 Perl is at the mercy of your machine's definitions of various
388 operations such as type casting, atof(), and floating-point
389 output with sprintf().
391 If your stdio requires a seek or eof between reads and writes on a
392 particular stream, so does Perl. (This doesn't apply to sysread()
395 While none of the built-in data types have any arbitrary size limits
396 (apart from memory size), there are still a few arbitrary limits: a
397 given variable name may not be longer than 251 characters. Line numbers
398 displayed by diagnostics are internally stored as short integers,
399 so they are limited to a maximum of 65535 (higher numbers usually being
400 affected by wraparound).
402 You may mail your bug reports (be sure to include full configuration
403 information as output by the myconfig program in the perl source
404 tree, or by C<perl -V>) to perlbug@perl.org . If you've succeeded
405 in compiling perl, the B<perlbug> script in the F<utils/> subdirectory
406 can be used to help mail in a bug report.
408 Perl actually stands for Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister, but
409 don't tell anyone I said that.
413 The Perl motto is "There's more than one way to do it." Divining
414 how many more is left as an exercise to the reader.
416 The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness,
417 Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.