3 perlfunc - Perl builtin functions
7 The functions in this section can serve as terms in an expression.
8 They fall into two major categories: list operators and named unary
9 operators. These differ in their precedence relationship with a
10 following comma. (See the precedence table in L<perlop>.) List
11 operators take more than one argument, while unary operators can never
12 take more than one argument. Thus, a comma terminates the argument of
13 a unary operator, but merely separates the arguments of a list
14 operator. A unary operator generally provides a scalar context to its
15 argument, while a list operator may provide either scalar or list
16 contexts for its arguments. If it does both, the scalar arguments will
17 be first, and the list argument will follow. (Note that there can ever
18 be only one such list argument.) For instance, splice() has three scalar
19 arguments followed by a list, whereas gethostbyname() has four scalar
22 In the syntax descriptions that follow, list operators that expect a
23 list (and provide list context for the elements of the list) are shown
24 with LIST as an argument. Such a list may consist of any combination
25 of scalar arguments or list values; the list values will be included
26 in the list as if each individual element were interpolated at that
27 point in the list, forming a longer single-dimensional list value.
28 Elements of the LIST should be separated by commas.
30 Any function in the list below may be used either with or without
31 parentheses around its arguments. (The syntax descriptions omit the
32 parentheses.) If you use the parentheses, the simple (but occasionally
33 surprising) rule is this: It I<looks> like a function, therefore it I<is> a
34 function, and precedence doesn't matter. Otherwise it's a list
35 operator or unary operator, and precedence does matter. And whitespace
36 between the function and left parenthesis doesn't count--so you need to
39 print 1+2+4; # Prints 7.
40 print(1+2) + 4; # Prints 3.
41 print (1+2)+4; # Also prints 3!
42 print +(1+2)+4; # Prints 7.
43 print ((1+2)+4); # Prints 7.
45 If you run Perl with the B<-w> switch it can warn you about this. For
46 example, the third line above produces:
48 print (...) interpreted as function at - line 1.
49 Useless use of integer addition in void context at - line 1.
51 A few functions take no arguments at all, and therefore work as neither
52 unary nor list operators. These include such functions as C<time>
53 and C<endpwent>. For example, C<time+86_400> always means
56 For functions that can be used in either a scalar or list context,
57 nonabortive failure is generally indicated in a scalar context by
58 returning the undefined value, and in a list context by returning the
61 Remember the following important rule: There is B<no rule> that relates
62 the behavior of an expression in list context to its behavior in scalar
63 context, or vice versa. It might do two totally different things.
64 Each operator and function decides which sort of value it would be most
65 appropriate to return in scalar context. Some operators return the
66 length of the list that would have been returned in list context. Some
67 operators return the first value in the list. Some operators return the
68 last value in the list. Some operators return a count of successful
69 operations. In general, they do what you want, unless you want
72 A named array in scalar context is quite different from what would at
73 first glance appear to be a list in scalar context. You can't get a list
74 like C<(1,2,3)> into being in scalar context, because the compiler knows
75 the context at compile time. It would generate the scalar comma operator
76 there, not the list construction version of the comma. That means it
77 was never a list to start with.
79 In general, functions in Perl that serve as wrappers for system calls
80 of the same name (like chown(2), fork(2), closedir(2), etc.) all return
81 true when they succeed and C<undef> otherwise, as is usually mentioned
82 in the descriptions below. This is different from the C interfaces,
83 which return C<-1> on failure. Exceptions to this rule are C<wait>,
84 C<waitpid>, and C<syscall>. System calls also set the special C<$!>
85 variable on failure. Other functions do not, except accidentally.
87 =head2 Perl Functions by Category
89 Here are Perl's functions (including things that look like
90 functions, like some keywords and named operators)
91 arranged by category. Some functions appear in more
96 =item Functions for SCALARs or strings
98 C<chomp>, C<chop>, C<chr>, C<crypt>, C<hex>, C<index>, C<lc>, C<lcfirst>,
99 C<length>, C<oct>, C<ord>, C<pack>, C<q/STRING/>, C<qq/STRING/>, C<reverse>,
100 C<rindex>, C<sprintf>, C<substr>, C<tr///>, C<uc>, C<ucfirst>, C<y///>
102 =item Regular expressions and pattern matching
104 C<m//>, C<pos>, C<quotemeta>, C<s///>, C<split>, C<study>, C<qr//>
106 =item Numeric functions
108 C<abs>, C<atan2>, C<cos>, C<exp>, C<hex>, C<int>, C<log>, C<oct>, C<rand>,
109 C<sin>, C<sqrt>, C<srand>
111 =item Functions for real @ARRAYs
113 C<pop>, C<push>, C<shift>, C<splice>, C<unshift>
115 =item Functions for list data
117 C<grep>, C<join>, C<map>, C<qw/STRING/>, C<reverse>, C<sort>, C<unpack>
119 =item Functions for real %HASHes
121 C<delete>, C<each>, C<exists>, C<keys>, C<values>
123 =item Input and output functions
125 C<binmode>, C<close>, C<closedir>, C<dbmclose>, C<dbmopen>, C<die>, C<eof>,
126 C<fileno>, C<flock>, C<format>, C<getc>, C<print>, C<printf>, C<read>,
127 C<readdir>, C<rewinddir>, C<seek>, C<seekdir>, C<select>, C<syscall>,
128 C<sysread>, C<sysseek>, C<syswrite>, C<tell>, C<telldir>, C<truncate>,
131 =item Functions for fixed length data or records
133 C<pack>, C<read>, C<syscall>, C<sysread>, C<syswrite>, C<unpack>, C<vec>
135 =item Functions for filehandles, files, or directories
137 C<-I<X>>, C<chdir>, C<chmod>, C<chown>, C<chroot>, C<fcntl>, C<glob>,
138 C<ioctl>, C<link>, C<lstat>, C<mkdir>, C<open>, C<opendir>,
139 C<readlink>, C<rename>, C<rmdir>, C<stat>, C<symlink>, C<umask>,
142 =item Keywords related to the control flow of your perl program
144 C<caller>, C<continue>, C<die>, C<do>, C<dump>, C<eval>, C<exit>,
145 C<goto>, C<last>, C<next>, C<redo>, C<return>, C<sub>, C<wantarray>
147 =item Keywords related to scoping
149 C<caller>, C<import>, C<local>, C<my>, C<our>, C<package>, C<use>
151 =item Miscellaneous functions
153 C<defined>, C<dump>, C<eval>, C<formline>, C<local>, C<my>, C<our>, C<reset>,
154 C<scalar>, C<undef>, C<wantarray>
156 =item Functions for processes and process groups
158 C<alarm>, C<exec>, C<fork>, C<getpgrp>, C<getppid>, C<getpriority>, C<kill>,
159 C<pipe>, C<qx/STRING/>, C<setpgrp>, C<setpriority>, C<sleep>, C<system>,
160 C<times>, C<wait>, C<waitpid>
162 =item Keywords related to perl modules
164 C<do>, C<import>, C<no>, C<package>, C<require>, C<use>
166 =item Keywords related to classes and object-orientedness
168 C<bless>, C<dbmclose>, C<dbmopen>, C<package>, C<ref>, C<tie>, C<tied>,
171 =item Low-level socket functions
173 C<accept>, C<bind>, C<connect>, C<getpeername>, C<getsockname>,
174 C<getsockopt>, C<listen>, C<recv>, C<send>, C<setsockopt>, C<shutdown>,
175 C<sockatmark>, C<socket>, C<socketpair>
177 =item System V interprocess communication functions
179 C<msgctl>, C<msgget>, C<msgrcv>, C<msgsnd>, C<semctl>, C<semget>, C<semop>,
180 C<shmctl>, C<shmget>, C<shmread>, C<shmwrite>
182 =item Fetching user and group info
184 C<endgrent>, C<endhostent>, C<endnetent>, C<endpwent>, C<getgrent>,
185 C<getgrgid>, C<getgrnam>, C<getlogin>, C<getpwent>, C<getpwnam>,
186 C<getpwuid>, C<setgrent>, C<setpwent>
188 =item Fetching network info
190 C<endprotoent>, C<endservent>, C<gethostbyaddr>, C<gethostbyname>,
191 C<gethostent>, C<getnetbyaddr>, C<getnetbyname>, C<getnetent>,
192 C<getprotobyname>, C<getprotobynumber>, C<getprotoent>,
193 C<getservbyname>, C<getservbyport>, C<getservent>, C<sethostent>,
194 C<setnetent>, C<setprotoent>, C<setservent>
196 =item Time-related functions
198 C<gmtime>, C<localtime>, C<time>, C<times>
200 =item Functions new in perl5
202 C<abs>, C<bless>, C<chomp>, C<chr>, C<exists>, C<formline>, C<glob>,
203 C<import>, C<lc>, C<lcfirst>, C<map>, C<my>, C<no>, C<our>, C<prototype>,
204 C<qx>, C<qw>, C<readline>, C<readpipe>, C<ref>, C<sub*>, C<sysopen>, C<tie>,
205 C<tied>, C<uc>, C<ucfirst>, C<untie>, C<use>
207 * - C<sub> was a keyword in perl4, but in perl5 it is an
208 operator, which can be used in expressions.
210 =item Functions obsoleted in perl5
212 C<dbmclose>, C<dbmopen>
218 Perl was born in Unix and can therefore access all common Unix
219 system calls. In non-Unix environments, the functionality of some
220 Unix system calls may not be available, or details of the available
221 functionality may differ slightly. The Perl functions affected
224 C<-X>, C<binmode>, C<chmod>, C<chown>, C<chroot>, C<crypt>,
225 C<dbmclose>, C<dbmopen>, C<dump>, C<endgrent>, C<endhostent>,
226 C<endnetent>, C<endprotoent>, C<endpwent>, C<endservent>, C<exec>,
227 C<fcntl>, C<flock>, C<fork>, C<getgrent>, C<getgrgid>, C<gethostent>,
228 C<getlogin>, C<getnetbyaddr>, C<getnetbyname>, C<getnetent>,
229 C<getppid>, C<getprgp>, C<getpriority>, C<getprotobynumber>,
230 C<getprotoent>, C<getpwent>, C<getpwnam>, C<getpwuid>,
231 C<getservbyport>, C<getservent>, C<getsockopt>, C<glob>, C<ioctl>,
232 C<kill>, C<link>, C<lstat>, C<msgctl>, C<msgget>, C<msgrcv>,
233 C<msgsnd>, C<open>, C<pipe>, C<readlink>, C<rename>, C<select>, C<semctl>,
234 C<semget>, C<semop>, C<setgrent>, C<sethostent>, C<setnetent>,
235 C<setpgrp>, C<setpriority>, C<setprotoent>, C<setpwent>,
236 C<setservent>, C<setsockopt>, C<shmctl>, C<shmget>, C<shmread>,
237 C<shmwrite>, C<sockatmark>, C<socket>, C<socketpair>,
238 C<stat>, C<symlink>, C<syscall>, C<sysopen>, C<system>,
239 C<times>, C<truncate>, C<umask>, C<unlink>,
240 C<utime>, C<wait>, C<waitpid>
242 For more information about the portability of these functions, see
243 L<perlport> and other available platform-specific documentation.
245 =head2 Alphabetical Listing of Perl Functions
249 =item I<-X> FILEHANDLE
255 A file test, where X is one of the letters listed below. This unary
256 operator takes one argument, either a filename or a filehandle, and
257 tests the associated file to see if something is true about it. If the
258 argument is omitted, tests C<$_>, except for C<-t>, which tests STDIN.
259 Unless otherwise documented, it returns C<1> for true and C<''> for false, or
260 the undefined value if the file doesn't exist. Despite the funny
261 names, precedence is the same as any other named unary operator, and
262 the argument may be parenthesized like any other unary operator. The
263 operator may be any of:
264 X<-r>X<-w>X<-x>X<-o>X<-R>X<-W>X<-X>X<-O>X<-e>X<-z>X<-s>X<-f>X<-d>X<-l>X<-p>
265 X<-S>X<-b>X<-c>X<-t>X<-u>X<-g>X<-k>X<-T>X<-B>X<-M>X<-A>X<-C>
267 -r File is readable by effective uid/gid.
268 -w File is writable by effective uid/gid.
269 -x File is executable by effective uid/gid.
270 -o File is owned by effective uid.
272 -R File is readable by real uid/gid.
273 -W File is writable by real uid/gid.
274 -X File is executable by real uid/gid.
275 -O File is owned by real uid.
278 -z File has zero size (is empty).
279 -s File has nonzero size (returns size in bytes).
281 -f File is a plain file.
282 -d File is a directory.
283 -l File is a symbolic link.
284 -p File is a named pipe (FIFO), or Filehandle is a pipe.
286 -b File is a block special file.
287 -c File is a character special file.
288 -t Filehandle is opened to a tty.
290 -u File has setuid bit set.
291 -g File has setgid bit set.
292 -k File has sticky bit set.
294 -T File is an ASCII text file (heuristic guess).
295 -B File is a "binary" file (opposite of -T).
297 -M Age of file in days when script started.
298 -A Same for access time.
299 -C Same for inode change time.
305 next unless -f $_; # ignore specials
309 The interpretation of the file permission operators C<-r>, C<-R>,
310 C<-w>, C<-W>, C<-x>, and C<-X> is by default based solely on the mode
311 of the file and the uids and gids of the user. There may be other
312 reasons you can't actually read, write, or execute the file. Such
313 reasons may be for example network filesystem access controls, ACLs
314 (access control lists), read-only filesystems, and unrecognized
317 Also note that, for the superuser on the local filesystems, the C<-r>,
318 C<-R>, C<-w>, and C<-W> tests always return 1, and C<-x> and C<-X> return 1
319 if any execute bit is set in the mode. Scripts run by the superuser
320 may thus need to do a stat() to determine the actual mode of the file,
321 or temporarily set their effective uid to something else.
323 If you are using ACLs, there is a pragma called C<filetest> that may
324 produce more accurate results than the bare stat() mode bits.
325 When under the C<use filetest 'access'> the above-mentioned filetests
326 will test whether the permission can (not) be granted using the
327 access() family of system calls. Also note that the C<-x> and C<-X> may
328 under this pragma return true even if there are no execute permission
329 bits set (nor any extra execute permission ACLs). This strangeness is
330 due to the underlying system calls' definitions. Read the
331 documentation for the C<filetest> pragma for more information.
333 Note that C<-s/a/b/> does not do a negated substitution. Saying
334 C<-exp($foo)> still works as expected, however--only single letters
335 following a minus are interpreted as file tests.
337 The C<-T> and C<-B> switches work as follows. The first block or so of the
338 file is examined for odd characters such as strange control codes or
339 characters with the high bit set. If too many strange characters (>30%)
340 are found, it's a C<-B> file, otherwise it's a C<-T> file. Also, any file
341 containing null in the first block is considered a binary file. If C<-T>
342 or C<-B> is used on a filehandle, the current IO buffer is examined
343 rather than the first block. Both C<-T> and C<-B> return true on a null
344 file, or a file at EOF when testing a filehandle. Because you have to
345 read a file to do the C<-T> test, on most occasions you want to use a C<-f>
346 against the file first, as in C<next unless -f $file && -T $file>.
348 If any of the file tests (or either the C<stat> or C<lstat> operators) are given
349 the special filehandle consisting of a solitary underline, then the stat
350 structure of the previous file test (or stat operator) is used, saving
351 a system call. (This doesn't work with C<-t>, and you need to remember
352 that lstat() and C<-l> will leave values in the stat structure for the
353 symbolic link, not the real file.) Example:
355 print "Can do.\n" if -r $a || -w _ || -x _;
358 print "Readable\n" if -r _;
359 print "Writable\n" if -w _;
360 print "Executable\n" if -x _;
361 print "Setuid\n" if -u _;
362 print "Setgid\n" if -g _;
363 print "Sticky\n" if -k _;
364 print "Text\n" if -T _;
365 print "Binary\n" if -B _;
371 Returns the absolute value of its argument.
372 If VALUE is omitted, uses C<$_>.
374 =item accept NEWSOCKET,GENERICSOCKET
376 Accepts an incoming socket connect, just as the accept(2) system call
377 does. Returns the packed address if it succeeded, false otherwise.
378 See the example in L<perlipc/"Sockets: Client/Server Communication">.
380 On systems that support a close-on-exec flag on files, the flag will
381 be set for the newly opened file descriptor, as determined by the
382 value of $^F. See L<perlvar/$^F>.
388 Arranges to have a SIGALRM delivered to this process after the
389 specified number of seconds have elapsed. If SECONDS is not specified,
390 the value stored in C<$_> is used. (On some machines,
391 unfortunately, the elapsed time may be up to one second less than you
392 specified because of how seconds are counted.) Only one timer may be
393 counting at once. Each call disables the previous timer, and an
394 argument of C<0> may be supplied to cancel the previous timer without
395 starting a new one. The returned value is the amount of time remaining
396 on the previous timer.
398 For delays of finer granularity than one second, you may use Perl's
399 four-argument version of select() leaving the first three arguments
400 undefined, or you might be able to use the C<syscall> interface to
401 access setitimer(2) if your system supports it. The Time::HiRes
402 module (from CPAN, and starting from Perl 5.8 part of the standard
403 distribution) may also prove useful.
405 It is usually a mistake to intermix C<alarm> and C<sleep> calls.
406 (C<sleep> may be internally implemented in your system with C<alarm>)
408 If you want to use C<alarm> to time out a system call you need to use an
409 C<eval>/C<die> pair. You can't rely on the alarm causing the system call to
410 fail with C<$!> set to C<EINTR> because Perl sets up signal handlers to
411 restart system calls on some systems. Using C<eval>/C<die> always works,
412 modulo the caveats given in L<perlipc/"Signals">.
415 local $SIG{ALRM} = sub { die "alarm\n" }; # NB: \n required
417 $nread = sysread SOCKET, $buffer, $size;
421 die unless $@ eq "alarm\n"; # propagate unexpected errors
430 Returns the arctangent of Y/X in the range -PI to PI.
432 For the tangent operation, you may use the C<Math::Trig::tan>
433 function, or use the familiar relation:
435 sub tan { sin($_[0]) / cos($_[0]) }
437 =item bind SOCKET,NAME
439 Binds a network address to a socket, just as the bind system call
440 does. Returns true if it succeeded, false otherwise. NAME should be a
441 packed address of the appropriate type for the socket. See the examples in
442 L<perlipc/"Sockets: Client/Server Communication">.
444 =item binmode FILEHANDLE, DISCIPLINE
446 =item binmode FILEHANDLE
448 Arranges for FILEHANDLE to be read or written in "binary" or "text" mode
449 on systems where the run-time libraries distinguish between binary and
450 text files. If FILEHANDLE is an expression, the value is taken as the
451 name of the filehandle. DISCIPLINE can be either of C<:raw> for
452 binary mode or C<:crlf> for "text" mode. If the DISCIPLINE is
453 omitted, it defaults to C<:raw>. Returns true on success, C<undef> on
454 failure. The C<:raw> are C<:clrf>, and any other directives of the
455 form C<:...>, are called I/O I<disciplines>.
457 The C<open> pragma can be used to establish default I/O disciplines.
460 In general, binmode() should be called after open() but before any I/O
461 is done on the filehandle. Calling binmode() will flush any possibly
462 pending buffered input or output data on the handle. The only
463 exception to this is the C<:encoding> discipline that changes
464 the default character encoding of the handle, see L<open>.
465 The C<:encoding> discipline sometimes needs to be called in
466 mid-stream, and it doesn't flush the stream.
468 On some systems binmode() is necessary when you're not working with a
469 text file. For the sake of portability it is a good idea to always use
470 it when appropriate, and to never use it when it isn't appropriate.
472 In other words: Regardless of platform, use binmode() on binary
473 files, and do not use binmode() on text files.
475 The operating system, device drivers, C libraries, and Perl run-time
476 system all work together to let the programmer treat a single
477 character (C<\n>) as the line terminator, irrespective of the external
478 representation. On many operating systems, the native text file
479 representation matches the internal representation, but on some
480 platforms the external representation of C<\n> is made up of more than
483 Mac OS, all variants of Unix, and Stream_LF files on VMS use a single
484 character to end each line in the external representation of text (even
485 though that single character is CARRIAGE RETURN on Mac OS and LINE FEED
486 on Unix and most VMS files). Consequently binmode() has no effect on
487 these operating systems. In other systems like OS/2, DOS and the various
488 flavors of MS-Windows your program sees a C<\n> as a simple C<\cJ>, but
489 what's stored in text files are the two characters C<\cM\cJ>. That means
490 that, if you don't use binmode() on these systems, C<\cM\cJ> sequences on
491 disk will be converted to C<\n> on input, and any C<\n> in your program
492 will be converted back to C<\cM\cJ> on output. This is what you want for
493 text files, but it can be disastrous for binary files.
495 Another consequence of using binmode() (on some systems) is that
496 special end-of-file markers will be seen as part of the data stream.
497 For systems from the Microsoft family this means that if your binary
498 data contains C<\cZ>, the I/O subsystem will regard it as the end of
499 the file, unless you use binmode().
501 binmode() is not only important for readline() and print() operations,
502 but also when using read(), seek(), sysread(), syswrite() and tell()
503 (see L<perlport> for more details). See the C<$/> and C<$\> variables
504 in L<perlvar> for how to manually set your input and output
505 line-termination sequences.
507 =item bless REF,CLASSNAME
511 This function tells the thingy referenced by REF that it is now an object
512 in the CLASSNAME package. If CLASSNAME is omitted, the current package
513 is used. Because a C<bless> is often the last thing in a constructor,
514 it returns the reference for convenience. Always use the two-argument
515 version if the function doing the blessing might be inherited by a
516 derived class. See L<perltoot> and L<perlobj> for more about the blessing
517 (and blessings) of objects.
519 Consider always blessing objects in CLASSNAMEs that are mixed case.
520 Namespaces with all lowercase names are considered reserved for
521 Perl pragmata. Builtin types have all uppercase names, so to prevent
522 confusion, you may wish to avoid such package names as well. Make sure
523 that CLASSNAME is a true value.
525 See L<perlmod/"Perl Modules">.
531 Returns the context of the current subroutine call. In scalar context,
532 returns the caller's package name if there is a caller, that is, if
533 we're in a subroutine or C<eval> or C<require>, and the undefined value
534 otherwise. In list context, returns
536 ($package, $filename, $line) = caller;
538 With EXPR, it returns some extra information that the debugger uses to
539 print a stack trace. The value of EXPR indicates how many call frames
540 to go back before the current one.
542 ($package, $filename, $line, $subroutine, $hasargs,
543 $wantarray, $evaltext, $is_require, $hints, $bitmask) = caller($i);
545 Here $subroutine may be C<(eval)> if the frame is not a subroutine
546 call, but an C<eval>. In such a case additional elements $evaltext and
547 C<$is_require> are set: C<$is_require> is true if the frame is created by a
548 C<require> or C<use> statement, $evaltext contains the text of the
549 C<eval EXPR> statement. In particular, for an C<eval BLOCK> statement,
550 $filename is C<(eval)>, but $evaltext is undefined. (Note also that
551 each C<use> statement creates a C<require> frame inside an C<eval EXPR>)
552 frame. C<$hasargs> is true if a new instance of C<@_> was set up for the
553 frame. C<$hints> and C<$bitmask> contain pragmatic hints that the caller
554 was compiled with. The C<$hints> and C<$bitmask> values are subject to
555 change between versions of Perl, and are not meant for external use.
557 Furthermore, when called from within the DB package, caller returns more
558 detailed information: it sets the list variable C<@DB::args> to be the
559 arguments with which the subroutine was invoked.
561 Be aware that the optimizer might have optimized call frames away before
562 C<caller> had a chance to get the information. That means that C<caller(N)>
563 might not return information about the call frame you expect it do, for
564 C<< N > 1 >>. In particular, C<@DB::args> might have information from the
565 previous time C<caller> was called.
569 Changes the working directory to EXPR, if possible. If EXPR is omitted,
570 changes to the directory specified by C<$ENV{HOME}>, if set; if not,
571 changes to the directory specified by C<$ENV{LOGDIR}>. (Under VMS, the
572 variable C<$ENV{SYS$LOGIN}> is also checked, and used if it is set.) If
573 neither is set, C<chdir> does nothing. It returns true upon success,
574 false otherwise. See the example under C<die>.
578 Changes the permissions of a list of files. The first element of the
579 list must be the numerical mode, which should probably be an octal
580 number, and which definitely should I<not> a string of octal digits:
581 C<0644> is okay, C<'0644'> is not. Returns the number of files
582 successfully changed. See also L</oct>, if all you have is a string.
584 $cnt = chmod 0755, 'foo', 'bar';
585 chmod 0755, @executables;
586 $mode = '0644'; chmod $mode, 'foo'; # !!! sets mode to
588 $mode = '0644'; chmod oct($mode), 'foo'; # this is better
589 $mode = 0644; chmod $mode, 'foo'; # this is best
591 You can also import the symbolic C<S_I*> constants from the Fcntl
596 chmod S_IRWXU|S_IRGRP|S_IXGRP|S_IROTH|S_IXOTH, @executables;
597 # This is identical to the chmod 0755 of the above example.
605 This safer version of L</chop> removes any trailing string
606 that corresponds to the current value of C<$/> (also known as
607 $INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR in the C<English> module). It returns the total
608 number of characters removed from all its arguments. It's often used to
609 remove the newline from the end of an input record when you're worried
610 that the final record may be missing its newline. When in paragraph
611 mode (C<$/ = "">), it removes all trailing newlines from the string.
612 When in slurp mode (C<$/ = undef>) or fixed-length record mode (C<$/> is
613 a reference to an integer or the like, see L<perlvar>) chomp() won't
615 If VARIABLE is omitted, it chomps C<$_>. Example:
618 chomp; # avoid \n on last field
623 If VARIABLE is a hash, it chomps the hash's values, but not its keys.
625 You can actually chomp anything that's an lvalue, including an assignment:
628 chomp($answer = <STDIN>);
630 If you chomp a list, each element is chomped, and the total number of
631 characters removed is returned.
639 Chops off the last character of a string and returns the character
640 chopped. It is much more efficient than C<s/.$//s> because it neither
641 scans nor copies the string. If VARIABLE is omitted, chops C<$_>.
642 If VARIABLE is a hash, it chops the hash's values, but not its keys.
644 You can actually chop anything that's an lvalue, including an assignment.
646 If you chop a list, each element is chopped. Only the value of the
647 last C<chop> is returned.
649 Note that C<chop> returns the last character. To return all but the last
650 character, use C<substr($string, 0, -1)>.
654 Changes the owner (and group) of a list of files. The first two
655 elements of the list must be the I<numeric> uid and gid, in that
656 order. A value of -1 in either position is interpreted by most
657 systems to leave that value unchanged. Returns the number of files
658 successfully changed.
660 $cnt = chown $uid, $gid, 'foo', 'bar';
661 chown $uid, $gid, @filenames;
663 Here's an example that looks up nonnumeric uids in the passwd file:
666 chomp($user = <STDIN>);
668 chomp($pattern = <STDIN>);
670 ($login,$pass,$uid,$gid) = getpwnam($user)
671 or die "$user not in passwd file";
673 @ary = glob($pattern); # expand filenames
674 chown $uid, $gid, @ary;
676 On most systems, you are not allowed to change the ownership of the
677 file unless you're the superuser, although you should be able to change
678 the group to any of your secondary groups. On insecure systems, these
679 restrictions may be relaxed, but this is not a portable assumption.
680 On POSIX systems, you can detect this condition this way:
682 use POSIX qw(sysconf _PC_CHOWN_RESTRICTED);
683 $can_chown_giveaway = not sysconf(_PC_CHOWN_RESTRICTED);
689 Returns the character represented by that NUMBER in the character set.
690 For example, C<chr(65)> is C<"A"> in either ASCII or Unicode, and
691 chr(0x263a) is a Unicode smiley face. Note that characters from 127
692 to 255 (inclusive) are by default not encoded in Unicode for backward
693 compatibility reasons (but see L<encoding>).
695 For the reverse, use L</ord>.
696 See L<perlunicode> and L<encoding> for more about Unicode.
698 If NUMBER is omitted, uses C<$_>.
700 =item chroot FILENAME
704 This function works like the system call by the same name: it makes the
705 named directory the new root directory for all further pathnames that
706 begin with a C</> by your process and all its children. (It doesn't
707 change your current working directory, which is unaffected.) For security
708 reasons, this call is restricted to the superuser. If FILENAME is
709 omitted, does a C<chroot> to C<$_>.
711 =item close FILEHANDLE
715 Closes the file or pipe associated with the file handle, returning
716 true only if IO buffers are successfully flushed and closes the system
717 file descriptor. Closes the currently selected filehandle if the
720 You don't have to close FILEHANDLE if you are immediately going to do
721 another C<open> on it, because C<open> will close it for you. (See
722 C<open>.) However, an explicit C<close> on an input file resets the line
723 counter (C<$.>), while the implicit close done by C<open> does not.
725 If the file handle came from a piped open C<close> will additionally
726 return false if one of the other system calls involved fails or if the
727 program exits with non-zero status. (If the only problem was that the
728 program exited non-zero C<$!> will be set to C<0>.) Closing a pipe
729 also waits for the process executing on the pipe to complete, in case you
730 want to look at the output of the pipe afterwards, and
731 implicitly puts the exit status value of that command into C<$?>.
733 Prematurely closing the read end of a pipe (i.e. before the process
734 writing to it at the other end has closed it) will result in a
735 SIGPIPE being delivered to the writer. If the other end can't
736 handle that, be sure to read all the data before closing the pipe.
740 open(OUTPUT, '|sort >foo') # pipe to sort
741 or die "Can't start sort: $!";
742 #... # print stuff to output
743 close OUTPUT # wait for sort to finish
744 or warn $! ? "Error closing sort pipe: $!"
745 : "Exit status $? from sort";
746 open(INPUT, 'foo') # get sort's results
747 or die "Can't open 'foo' for input: $!";
749 FILEHANDLE may be an expression whose value can be used as an indirect
750 filehandle, usually the real filehandle name.
752 =item closedir DIRHANDLE
754 Closes a directory opened by C<opendir> and returns the success of that
757 DIRHANDLE may be an expression whose value can be used as an indirect
758 dirhandle, usually the real dirhandle name.
760 =item connect SOCKET,NAME
762 Attempts to connect to a remote socket, just as the connect system call
763 does. Returns true if it succeeded, false otherwise. NAME should be a
764 packed address of the appropriate type for the socket. See the examples in
765 L<perlipc/"Sockets: Client/Server Communication">.
769 Actually a flow control statement rather than a function. If there is a
770 C<continue> BLOCK attached to a BLOCK (typically in a C<while> or
771 C<foreach>), it is always executed just before the conditional is about to
772 be evaluated again, just like the third part of a C<for> loop in C. Thus
773 it can be used to increment a loop variable, even when the loop has been
774 continued via the C<next> statement (which is similar to the C C<continue>
777 C<last>, C<next>, or C<redo> may appear within a C<continue>
778 block. C<last> and C<redo> will behave as if they had been executed within
779 the main block. So will C<next>, but since it will execute a C<continue>
780 block, it may be more entertaining.
783 ### redo always comes here
786 ### next always comes here
788 # then back the top to re-check EXPR
790 ### last always comes here
792 Omitting the C<continue> section is semantically equivalent to using an
793 empty one, logically enough. In that case, C<next> goes directly back
794 to check the condition at the top of the loop.
800 Returns the cosine of EXPR (expressed in radians). If EXPR is omitted,
801 takes cosine of C<$_>.
803 For the inverse cosine operation, you may use the C<Math::Trig::acos()>
804 function, or use this relation:
806 sub acos { atan2( sqrt(1 - $_[0] * $_[0]), $_[0] ) }
808 =item crypt PLAINTEXT,SALT
810 Encrypts a string exactly like the crypt(3) function in the C library
811 (assuming that you actually have a version there that has not been
812 extirpated as a potential munition). This can prove useful for checking
813 the password file for lousy passwords, amongst other things. Only the
814 guys wearing white hats should do this.
816 Note that C<crypt> is intended to be a one-way function, much like
817 breaking eggs to make an omelette. There is no (known) corresponding
818 decrypt function (in other words, the crypt() is a one-way hash
819 function). As a result, this function isn't all that useful for
820 cryptography. (For that, see your nearby CPAN mirror.)
822 When verifying an existing encrypted string you should use the
823 encrypted text as the salt (like C<crypt($plain, $crypted) eq
824 $crypted>). This allows your code to work with the standard C<crypt>
825 and with more exotic implementations. In other words, do not assume
826 anything about the returned string itself, or how many bytes in
827 the encrypted string matter.
829 Traditionally the result is a string of 13 bytes: two first bytes of
830 the salt, followed by 11 bytes from the set C<[./0-9A-Za-z]>, and only
831 the first eight bytes of the encrypted string mattered, but
832 alternative hashing schemes (like MD5), higher level security schemes
833 (like C2), and implementations on non-UNIX platforms may produce
836 When choosing a new salt create a random two character string whose
837 characters come from the set C<[./0-9A-Za-z]> (like C<join '', ('.',
838 '/', 0..9, 'A'..'Z', 'a'..'z')[rand 64, rand 64]>).
840 Here's an example that makes sure that whoever runs this program knows
843 $pwd = (getpwuid($<))[1];
847 chomp($word = <STDIN>);
851 if (crypt($word, $pwd) ne $pwd) {
857 Of course, typing in your own password to whoever asks you
860 The L<crypt> function is unsuitable for encrypting large quantities
861 of data, not least of all because you can't get the information
862 back. Look at the F<by-module/Crypt> and F<by-module/PGP> directories
863 on your favorite CPAN mirror for a slew of potentially useful
866 If using crypt() on a Unicode string (which potentially has
867 characters with codepoints above 255), Perl tries to make sense of
868 the situation by using only the low eight bits of the characters when
873 [This function has been largely superseded by the C<untie> function.]
875 Breaks the binding between a DBM file and a hash.
877 =item dbmopen HASH,DBNAME,MASK
879 [This function has been largely superseded by the C<tie> function.]
881 This binds a dbm(3), ndbm(3), sdbm(3), gdbm(3), or Berkeley DB file to a
882 hash. HASH is the name of the hash. (Unlike normal C<open>, the first
883 argument is I<not> a filehandle, even though it looks like one). DBNAME
884 is the name of the database (without the F<.dir> or F<.pag> extension if
885 any). If the database does not exist, it is created with protection
886 specified by MASK (as modified by the C<umask>). If your system supports
887 only the older DBM functions, you may perform only one C<dbmopen> in your
888 program. In older versions of Perl, if your system had neither DBM nor
889 ndbm, calling C<dbmopen> produced a fatal error; it now falls back to
892 If you don't have write access to the DBM file, you can only read hash
893 variables, not set them. If you want to test whether you can write,
894 either use file tests or try setting a dummy hash entry inside an C<eval>,
895 which will trap the error.
897 Note that functions such as C<keys> and C<values> may return huge lists
898 when used on large DBM files. You may prefer to use the C<each>
899 function to iterate over large DBM files. Example:
901 # print out history file offsets
902 dbmopen(%HIST,'/usr/lib/news/history',0666);
903 while (($key,$val) = each %HIST) {
904 print $key, ' = ', unpack('L',$val), "\n";
908 See also L<AnyDBM_File> for a more general description of the pros and
909 cons of the various dbm approaches, as well as L<DB_File> for a particularly
912 You can control which DBM library you use by loading that library
913 before you call dbmopen():
916 dbmopen(%NS_Hist, "$ENV{HOME}/.netscape/history.db")
917 or die "Can't open netscape history file: $!";
923 Returns a Boolean value telling whether EXPR has a value other than
924 the undefined value C<undef>. If EXPR is not present, C<$_> will be
927 Many operations return C<undef> to indicate failure, end of file,
928 system error, uninitialized variable, and other exceptional
929 conditions. This function allows you to distinguish C<undef> from
930 other values. (A simple Boolean test will not distinguish among
931 C<undef>, zero, the empty string, and C<"0">, which are all equally
932 false.) Note that since C<undef> is a valid scalar, its presence
933 doesn't I<necessarily> indicate an exceptional condition: C<pop>
934 returns C<undef> when its argument is an empty array, I<or> when the
935 element to return happens to be C<undef>.
937 You may also use C<defined(&func)> to check whether subroutine C<&func>
938 has ever been defined. The return value is unaffected by any forward
939 declarations of C<&foo>. Note that a subroutine which is not defined
940 may still be callable: its package may have an C<AUTOLOAD> method that
941 makes it spring into existence the first time that it is called -- see
944 Use of C<defined> on aggregates (hashes and arrays) is deprecated. It
945 used to report whether memory for that aggregate has ever been
946 allocated. This behavior may disappear in future versions of Perl.
947 You should instead use a simple test for size:
949 if (@an_array) { print "has array elements\n" }
950 if (%a_hash) { print "has hash members\n" }
952 When used on a hash element, it tells you whether the value is defined,
953 not whether the key exists in the hash. Use L</exists> for the latter
958 print if defined $switch{'D'};
959 print "$val\n" while defined($val = pop(@ary));
960 die "Can't readlink $sym: $!"
961 unless defined($value = readlink $sym);
962 sub foo { defined &$bar ? &$bar(@_) : die "No bar"; }
963 $debugging = 0 unless defined $debugging;
965 Note: Many folks tend to overuse C<defined>, and then are surprised to
966 discover that the number C<0> and C<""> (the zero-length string) are, in fact,
967 defined values. For example, if you say
971 The pattern match succeeds, and C<$1> is defined, despite the fact that it
972 matched "nothing". But it didn't really match nothing--rather, it
973 matched something that happened to be zero characters long. This is all
974 very above-board and honest. When a function returns an undefined value,
975 it's an admission that it couldn't give you an honest answer. So you
976 should use C<defined> only when you're questioning the integrity of what
977 you're trying to do. At other times, a simple comparison to C<0> or C<""> is
980 See also L</undef>, L</exists>, L</ref>.
984 Given an expression that specifies a hash element, array element, hash slice,
985 or array slice, deletes the specified element(s) from the hash or array.
986 In the case of an array, if the array elements happen to be at the end,
987 the size of the array will shrink to the highest element that tests
988 true for exists() (or 0 if no such element exists).
990 Returns each element so deleted or the undefined value if there was no such
991 element. Deleting from C<$ENV{}> modifies the environment. Deleting from
992 a hash tied to a DBM file deletes the entry from the DBM file. Deleting
993 from a C<tie>d hash or array may not necessarily return anything.
995 Deleting an array element effectively returns that position of the array
996 to its initial, uninitialized state. Subsequently testing for the same
997 element with exists() will return false. Note that deleting array
998 elements in the middle of an array will not shift the index of the ones
999 after them down--use splice() for that. See L</exists>.
1001 The following (inefficiently) deletes all the values of %HASH and @ARRAY:
1003 foreach $key (keys %HASH) {
1007 foreach $index (0 .. $#ARRAY) {
1008 delete $ARRAY[$index];
1013 delete @HASH{keys %HASH};
1015 delete @ARRAY[0 .. $#ARRAY];
1017 But both of these are slower than just assigning the empty list
1018 or undefining %HASH or @ARRAY:
1020 %HASH = (); # completely empty %HASH
1021 undef %HASH; # forget %HASH ever existed
1023 @ARRAY = (); # completely empty @ARRAY
1024 undef @ARRAY; # forget @ARRAY ever existed
1026 Note that the EXPR can be arbitrarily complicated as long as the final
1027 operation is a hash element, array element, hash slice, or array slice
1030 delete $ref->[$x][$y]{$key};
1031 delete @{$ref->[$x][$y]}{$key1, $key2, @morekeys};
1033 delete $ref->[$x][$y][$index];
1034 delete @{$ref->[$x][$y]}[$index1, $index2, @moreindices];
1038 Outside an C<eval>, prints the value of LIST to C<STDERR> and
1039 exits with the current value of C<$!> (errno). If C<$!> is C<0>,
1040 exits with the value of C<<< ($? >> 8) >>> (backtick `command`
1041 status). If C<<< ($? >> 8) >>> is C<0>, exits with C<255>. Inside
1042 an C<eval(),> the error message is stuffed into C<$@> and the
1043 C<eval> is terminated with the undefined value. This makes
1044 C<die> the way to raise an exception.
1046 Equivalent examples:
1048 die "Can't cd to spool: $!\n" unless chdir '/usr/spool/news';
1049 chdir '/usr/spool/news' or die "Can't cd to spool: $!\n"
1051 If the value of EXPR does not end in a newline, the current script line
1052 number and input line number (if any) are also printed, and a newline
1053 is supplied. Note that the "input line number" (also known as "chunk")
1054 is subject to whatever notion of "line" happens to be currently in
1055 effect, and is also available as the special variable C<$.>.
1056 See L<perlvar/"$/"> and L<perlvar/"$.">.
1058 Hint: sometimes appending C<", stopped"> to your message
1059 will cause it to make better sense when the string C<"at foo line 123"> is
1060 appended. Suppose you are running script "canasta".
1062 die "/etc/games is no good";
1063 die "/etc/games is no good, stopped";
1065 produce, respectively
1067 /etc/games is no good at canasta line 123.
1068 /etc/games is no good, stopped at canasta line 123.
1070 See also exit(), warn(), and the Carp module.
1072 If LIST is empty and C<$@> already contains a value (typically from a
1073 previous eval) that value is reused after appending C<"\t...propagated">.
1074 This is useful for propagating exceptions:
1077 die unless $@ =~ /Expected exception/;
1079 If C<$@> is empty then the string C<"Died"> is used.
1081 die() can also be called with a reference argument. If this happens to be
1082 trapped within an eval(), $@ contains the reference. This behavior permits
1083 a more elaborate exception handling implementation using objects that
1084 maintain arbitrary state about the nature of the exception. Such a scheme
1085 is sometimes preferable to matching particular string values of $@ using
1086 regular expressions. Here's an example:
1088 eval { ... ; die Some::Module::Exception->new( FOO => "bar" ) };
1090 if (ref($@) && UNIVERSAL::isa($@,"Some::Module::Exception")) {
1091 # handle Some::Module::Exception
1094 # handle all other possible exceptions
1098 Because perl will stringify uncaught exception messages before displaying
1099 them, you may want to overload stringification operations on such custom
1100 exception objects. See L<overload> for details about that.
1102 You can arrange for a callback to be run just before the C<die>
1103 does its deed, by setting the C<$SIG{__DIE__}> hook. The associated
1104 handler will be called with the error text and can change the error
1105 message, if it sees fit, by calling C<die> again. See
1106 L<perlvar/$SIG{expr}> for details on setting C<%SIG> entries, and
1107 L<"eval BLOCK"> for some examples. Although this feature was meant
1108 to be run only right before your program was to exit, this is not
1109 currently the case--the C<$SIG{__DIE__}> hook is currently called
1110 even inside eval()ed blocks/strings! If one wants the hook to do
1111 nothing in such situations, put
1115 as the first line of the handler (see L<perlvar/$^S>). Because
1116 this promotes strange action at a distance, this counterintuitive
1117 behavior may be fixed in a future release.
1121 Not really a function. Returns the value of the last command in the
1122 sequence of commands indicated by BLOCK. When modified by a loop
1123 modifier, executes the BLOCK once before testing the loop condition.
1124 (On other statements the loop modifiers test the conditional first.)
1126 C<do BLOCK> does I<not> count as a loop, so the loop control statements
1127 C<next>, C<last>, or C<redo> cannot be used to leave or restart the block.
1128 See L<perlsyn> for alternative strategies.
1130 =item do SUBROUTINE(LIST)
1132 A deprecated form of subroutine call. See L<perlsub>.
1136 Uses the value of EXPR as a filename and executes the contents of the
1137 file as a Perl script. Its primary use is to include subroutines
1138 from a Perl subroutine library.
1146 except that it's more efficient and concise, keeps track of the current
1147 filename for error messages, searches the @INC libraries, and updates
1148 C<%INC> if the file is found. See L<perlvar/Predefined Names> for these
1149 variables. It also differs in that code evaluated with C<do FILENAME>
1150 cannot see lexicals in the enclosing scope; C<eval STRING> does. It's the
1151 same, however, in that it does reparse the file every time you call it,
1152 so you probably don't want to do this inside a loop.
1154 If C<do> cannot read the file, it returns undef and sets C<$!> to the
1155 error. If C<do> can read the file but cannot compile it, it
1156 returns undef and sets an error message in C<$@>. If the file is
1157 successfully compiled, C<do> returns the value of the last expression
1160 Note that inclusion of library modules is better done with the
1161 C<use> and C<require> operators, which also do automatic error checking
1162 and raise an exception if there's a problem.
1164 You might like to use C<do> to read in a program configuration
1165 file. Manual error checking can be done this way:
1167 # read in config files: system first, then user
1168 for $file ("/share/prog/defaults.rc",
1169 "$ENV{HOME}/.someprogrc")
1171 unless ($return = do $file) {
1172 warn "couldn't parse $file: $@" if $@;
1173 warn "couldn't do $file: $!" unless defined $return;
1174 warn "couldn't run $file" unless $return;
1182 This function causes an immediate core dump. See also the B<-u>
1183 command-line switch in L<perlrun>, which does the same thing.
1184 Primarily this is so that you can use the B<undump> program (not
1185 supplied) to turn your core dump into an executable binary after
1186 having initialized all your variables at the beginning of the
1187 program. When the new binary is executed it will begin by executing
1188 a C<goto LABEL> (with all the restrictions that C<goto> suffers).
1189 Think of it as a goto with an intervening core dump and reincarnation.
1190 If C<LABEL> is omitted, restarts the program from the top.
1192 B<WARNING>: Any files opened at the time of the dump will I<not>
1193 be open any more when the program is reincarnated, with possible
1194 resulting confusion on the part of Perl.
1196 This function is now largely obsolete, partly because it's very
1197 hard to convert a core file into an executable, and because the
1198 real compiler backends for generating portable bytecode and compilable
1199 C code have superseded it.
1201 If you're looking to use L<dump> to speed up your program, consider
1202 generating bytecode or native C code as described in L<perlcc>. If
1203 you're just trying to accelerate a CGI script, consider using the
1204 C<mod_perl> extension to B<Apache>, or the CPAN module, CGI::Fast.
1205 You might also consider autoloading or selfloading, which at least
1206 make your program I<appear> to run faster.
1210 When called in list context, returns a 2-element list consisting of the
1211 key and value for the next element of a hash, so that you can iterate over
1212 it. When called in scalar context, returns only the key for the next
1213 element in the hash.
1215 Entries are returned in an apparently random order. The actual random
1216 order is subject to change in future versions of perl, but it is guaranteed
1217 to be in the same order as either the C<keys> or C<values> function
1218 would produce on the same (unmodified) hash.
1220 When the hash is entirely read, a null array is returned in list context
1221 (which when assigned produces a false (C<0>) value), and C<undef> in
1222 scalar context. The next call to C<each> after that will start iterating
1223 again. There is a single iterator for each hash, shared by all C<each>,
1224 C<keys>, and C<values> function calls in the program; it can be reset by
1225 reading all the elements from the hash, or by evaluating C<keys HASH> or
1226 C<values HASH>. If you add or delete elements of a hash while you're
1227 iterating over it, you may get entries skipped or duplicated, so
1228 don't. Exception: It is always safe to delete the item most recently
1229 returned by C<each()>, which means that the following code will work:
1231 while (($key, $value) = each %hash) {
1233 delete $hash{$key}; # This is safe
1236 The following prints out your environment like the printenv(1) program,
1237 only in a different order:
1239 while (($key,$value) = each %ENV) {
1240 print "$key=$value\n";
1243 See also C<keys>, C<values> and C<sort>.
1245 =item eof FILEHANDLE
1251 Returns 1 if the next read on FILEHANDLE will return end of file, or if
1252 FILEHANDLE is not open. FILEHANDLE may be an expression whose value
1253 gives the real filehandle. (Note that this function actually
1254 reads a character and then C<ungetc>s it, so isn't very useful in an
1255 interactive context.) Do not read from a terminal file (or call
1256 C<eof(FILEHANDLE)> on it) after end-of-file is reached. File types such
1257 as terminals may lose the end-of-file condition if you do.
1259 An C<eof> without an argument uses the last file read. Using C<eof()>
1260 with empty parentheses is very different. It refers to the pseudo file
1261 formed from the files listed on the command line and accessed via the
1262 C<< <> >> operator. Since C<< <> >> isn't explicitly opened,
1263 as a normal filehandle is, an C<eof()> before C<< <> >> has been
1264 used will cause C<@ARGV> to be examined to determine if input is
1267 In a C<< while (<>) >> loop, C<eof> or C<eof(ARGV)> can be used to
1268 detect the end of each file, C<eof()> will only detect the end of the
1269 last file. Examples:
1271 # reset line numbering on each input file
1273 next if /^\s*#/; # skip comments
1276 close ARGV if eof; # Not eof()!
1279 # insert dashes just before last line of last file
1281 if (eof()) { # check for end of current file
1282 print "--------------\n";
1283 close(ARGV); # close or last; is needed if we
1284 # are reading from the terminal
1289 Practical hint: you almost never need to use C<eof> in Perl, because the
1290 input operators typically return C<undef> when they run out of data, or if
1297 In the first form, the return value of EXPR is parsed and executed as if it
1298 were a little Perl program. The value of the expression (which is itself
1299 determined within scalar context) is first parsed, and if there weren't any
1300 errors, executed in the lexical context of the current Perl program, so
1301 that any variable settings or subroutine and format definitions remain
1302 afterwards. Note that the value is parsed every time the eval executes.
1303 If EXPR is omitted, evaluates C<$_>. This form is typically used to
1304 delay parsing and subsequent execution of the text of EXPR until run time.
1306 In the second form, the code within the BLOCK is parsed only once--at the
1307 same time the code surrounding the eval itself was parsed--and executed
1308 within the context of the current Perl program. This form is typically
1309 used to trap exceptions more efficiently than the first (see below), while
1310 also providing the benefit of checking the code within BLOCK at compile
1313 The final semicolon, if any, may be omitted from the value of EXPR or within
1316 In both forms, the value returned is the value of the last expression
1317 evaluated inside the mini-program; a return statement may be also used, just
1318 as with subroutines. The expression providing the return value is evaluated
1319 in void, scalar, or list context, depending on the context of the eval itself.
1320 See L</wantarray> for more on how the evaluation context can be determined.
1322 If there is a syntax error or runtime error, or a C<die> statement is
1323 executed, an undefined value is returned by C<eval>, and C<$@> is set to the
1324 error message. If there was no error, C<$@> is guaranteed to be a null
1325 string. Beware that using C<eval> neither silences perl from printing
1326 warnings to STDERR, nor does it stuff the text of warning messages into C<$@>.
1327 To do either of those, you have to use the C<$SIG{__WARN__}> facility. See
1328 L</warn> and L<perlvar>.
1330 Note that, because C<eval> traps otherwise-fatal errors, it is useful for
1331 determining whether a particular feature (such as C<socket> or C<symlink>)
1332 is implemented. It is also Perl's exception trapping mechanism, where
1333 the die operator is used to raise exceptions.
1335 If the code to be executed doesn't vary, you may use the eval-BLOCK
1336 form to trap run-time errors without incurring the penalty of
1337 recompiling each time. The error, if any, is still returned in C<$@>.
1340 # make divide-by-zero nonfatal
1341 eval { $answer = $a / $b; }; warn $@ if $@;
1343 # same thing, but less efficient
1344 eval '$answer = $a / $b'; warn $@ if $@;
1346 # a compile-time error
1347 eval { $answer = }; # WRONG
1350 eval '$answer ='; # sets $@
1352 Due to the current arguably broken state of C<__DIE__> hooks, when using
1353 the C<eval{}> form as an exception trap in libraries, you may wish not
1354 to trigger any C<__DIE__> hooks that user code may have installed.
1355 You can use the C<local $SIG{__DIE__}> construct for this purpose,
1356 as shown in this example:
1358 # a very private exception trap for divide-by-zero
1359 eval { local $SIG{'__DIE__'}; $answer = $a / $b; };
1362 This is especially significant, given that C<__DIE__> hooks can call
1363 C<die> again, which has the effect of changing their error messages:
1365 # __DIE__ hooks may modify error messages
1367 local $SIG{'__DIE__'} =
1368 sub { (my $x = $_[0]) =~ s/foo/bar/g; die $x };
1369 eval { die "foo lives here" };
1370 print $@ if $@; # prints "bar lives here"
1373 Because this promotes action at a distance, this counterintuitive behavior
1374 may be fixed in a future release.
1376 With an C<eval>, you should be especially careful to remember what's
1377 being looked at when:
1383 eval { $x }; # CASE 4
1385 eval "\$$x++"; # CASE 5
1388 Cases 1 and 2 above behave identically: they run the code contained in
1389 the variable $x. (Although case 2 has misleading double quotes making
1390 the reader wonder what else might be happening (nothing is).) Cases 3
1391 and 4 likewise behave in the same way: they run the code C<'$x'>, which
1392 does nothing but return the value of $x. (Case 4 is preferred for
1393 purely visual reasons, but it also has the advantage of compiling at
1394 compile-time instead of at run-time.) Case 5 is a place where
1395 normally you I<would> like to use double quotes, except that in this
1396 particular situation, you can just use symbolic references instead, as
1399 C<eval BLOCK> does I<not> count as a loop, so the loop control statements
1400 C<next>, C<last>, or C<redo> cannot be used to leave or restart the block.
1404 =item exec PROGRAM LIST
1406 The C<exec> function executes a system command I<and never returns>--
1407 use C<system> instead of C<exec> if you want it to return. It fails and
1408 returns false only if the command does not exist I<and> it is executed
1409 directly instead of via your system's command shell (see below).
1411 Since it's a common mistake to use C<exec> instead of C<system>, Perl
1412 warns you if there is a following statement which isn't C<die>, C<warn>,
1413 or C<exit> (if C<-w> is set - but you always do that). If you
1414 I<really> want to follow an C<exec> with some other statement, you
1415 can use one of these styles to avoid the warning:
1417 exec ('foo') or print STDERR "couldn't exec foo: $!";
1418 { exec ('foo') }; print STDERR "couldn't exec foo: $!";
1420 If there is more than one argument in LIST, or if LIST is an array
1421 with more than one value, calls execvp(3) with the arguments in LIST.
1422 If there is only one scalar argument or an array with one element in it,
1423 the argument is checked for shell metacharacters, and if there are any,
1424 the entire argument is passed to the system's command shell for parsing
1425 (this is C</bin/sh -c> on Unix platforms, but varies on other platforms).
1426 If there are no shell metacharacters in the argument, it is split into
1427 words and passed directly to C<execvp>, which is more efficient.
1430 exec '/bin/echo', 'Your arguments are: ', @ARGV;
1431 exec "sort $outfile | uniq";
1433 If you don't really want to execute the first argument, but want to lie
1434 to the program you are executing about its own name, you can specify
1435 the program you actually want to run as an "indirect object" (without a
1436 comma) in front of the LIST. (This always forces interpretation of the
1437 LIST as a multivalued list, even if there is only a single scalar in
1440 $shell = '/bin/csh';
1441 exec $shell '-sh'; # pretend it's a login shell
1445 exec {'/bin/csh'} '-sh'; # pretend it's a login shell
1447 When the arguments get executed via the system shell, results will
1448 be subject to its quirks and capabilities. See L<perlop/"`STRING`">
1451 Using an indirect object with C<exec> or C<system> is also more
1452 secure. This usage (which also works fine with system()) forces
1453 interpretation of the arguments as a multivalued list, even if the
1454 list had just one argument. That way you're safe from the shell
1455 expanding wildcards or splitting up words with whitespace in them.
1457 @args = ( "echo surprise" );
1459 exec @args; # subject to shell escapes
1461 exec { $args[0] } @args; # safe even with one-arg list
1463 The first version, the one without the indirect object, ran the I<echo>
1464 program, passing it C<"surprise"> an argument. The second version
1465 didn't--it tried to run a program literally called I<"echo surprise">,
1466 didn't find it, and set C<$?> to a non-zero value indicating failure.
1468 Beginning with v5.6.0, Perl will attempt to flush all files opened for
1469 output before the exec, but this may not be supported on some platforms
1470 (see L<perlport>). To be safe, you may need to set C<$|> ($AUTOFLUSH
1471 in English) or call the C<autoflush()> method of C<IO::Handle> on any
1472 open handles in order to avoid lost output.
1474 Note that C<exec> will not call your C<END> blocks, nor will it call
1475 any C<DESTROY> methods in your objects.
1479 Given an expression that specifies a hash element or array element,
1480 returns true if the specified element in the hash or array has ever
1481 been initialized, even if the corresponding value is undefined. The
1482 element is not autovivified if it doesn't exist.
1484 print "Exists\n" if exists $hash{$key};
1485 print "Defined\n" if defined $hash{$key};
1486 print "True\n" if $hash{$key};
1488 print "Exists\n" if exists $array[$index];
1489 print "Defined\n" if defined $array[$index];
1490 print "True\n" if $array[$index];
1492 A hash or array element can be true only if it's defined, and defined if
1493 it exists, but the reverse doesn't necessarily hold true.
1495 Given an expression that specifies the name of a subroutine,
1496 returns true if the specified subroutine has ever been declared, even
1497 if it is undefined. Mentioning a subroutine name for exists or defined
1498 does not count as declaring it. Note that a subroutine which does not
1499 exist may still be callable: its package may have an C<AUTOLOAD>
1500 method that makes it spring into existence the first time that it is
1501 called -- see L<perlsub>.
1503 print "Exists\n" if exists &subroutine;
1504 print "Defined\n" if defined &subroutine;
1506 Note that the EXPR can be arbitrarily complicated as long as the final
1507 operation is a hash or array key lookup or subroutine name:
1509 if (exists $ref->{A}->{B}->{$key}) { }
1510 if (exists $hash{A}{B}{$key}) { }
1512 if (exists $ref->{A}->{B}->[$ix]) { }
1513 if (exists $hash{A}{B}[$ix]) { }
1515 if (exists &{$ref->{A}{B}{$key}}) { }
1517 Although the deepest nested array or hash will not spring into existence
1518 just because its existence was tested, any intervening ones will.
1519 Thus C<< $ref->{"A"} >> and C<< $ref->{"A"}->{"B"} >> will spring
1520 into existence due to the existence test for the $key element above.
1521 This happens anywhere the arrow operator is used, including even:
1524 if (exists $ref->{"Some key"}) { }
1525 print $ref; # prints HASH(0x80d3d5c)
1527 This surprising autovivification in what does not at first--or even
1528 second--glance appear to be an lvalue context may be fixed in a future
1531 See L<perlref/"Pseudo-hashes: Using an array as a hash"> for specifics
1532 on how exists() acts when used on a pseudo-hash.
1534 Use of a subroutine call, rather than a subroutine name, as an argument
1535 to exists() is an error.
1538 exists &sub(); # Error
1542 Evaluates EXPR and exits immediately with that value. Example:
1545 exit 0 if $ans =~ /^[Xx]/;
1547 See also C<die>. If EXPR is omitted, exits with C<0> status. The only
1548 universally recognized values for EXPR are C<0> for success and C<1>
1549 for error; other values are subject to interpretation depending on the
1550 environment in which the Perl program is running. For example, exiting
1551 69 (EX_UNAVAILABLE) from a I<sendmail> incoming-mail filter will cause
1552 the mailer to return the item undelivered, but that's not true everywhere.
1554 Don't use C<exit> to abort a subroutine if there's any chance that
1555 someone might want to trap whatever error happened. Use C<die> instead,
1556 which can be trapped by an C<eval>.
1558 The exit() function does not always exit immediately. It calls any
1559 defined C<END> routines first, but these C<END> routines may not
1560 themselves abort the exit. Likewise any object destructors that need to
1561 be called are called before the real exit. If this is a problem, you
1562 can call C<POSIX:_exit($status)> to avoid END and destructor processing.
1563 See L<perlmod> for details.
1569 Returns I<e> (the natural logarithm base) to the power of EXPR.
1570 If EXPR is omitted, gives C<exp($_)>.
1572 =item fcntl FILEHANDLE,FUNCTION,SCALAR
1574 Implements the fcntl(2) function. You'll probably have to say
1578 first to get the correct constant definitions. Argument processing and
1579 value return works just like C<ioctl> below.
1583 fcntl($filehandle, F_GETFL, $packed_return_buffer)
1584 or die "can't fcntl F_GETFL: $!";
1586 You don't have to check for C<defined> on the return from C<fnctl>.
1587 Like C<ioctl>, it maps a C<0> return from the system call into
1588 C<"0 but true"> in Perl. This string is true in boolean context and C<0>
1589 in numeric context. It is also exempt from the normal B<-w> warnings
1590 on improper numeric conversions.
1592 Note that C<fcntl> will produce a fatal error if used on a machine that
1593 doesn't implement fcntl(2). See the Fcntl module or your fcntl(2)
1594 manpage to learn what functions are available on your system.
1596 =item fileno FILEHANDLE
1598 Returns the file descriptor for a filehandle, or undefined if the
1599 filehandle is not open. This is mainly useful for constructing
1600 bitmaps for C<select> and low-level POSIX tty-handling operations.
1601 If FILEHANDLE is an expression, the value is taken as an indirect
1602 filehandle, generally its name.
1604 You can use this to find out whether two handles refer to the
1605 same underlying descriptor:
1607 if (fileno(THIS) == fileno(THAT)) {
1608 print "THIS and THAT are dups\n";
1611 (Filehandles connected to memory objects via new features of C<open> may
1612 return undefined even though they are open.)
1615 =item flock FILEHANDLE,OPERATION
1617 Calls flock(2), or an emulation of it, on FILEHANDLE. Returns true
1618 for success, false on failure. Produces a fatal error if used on a
1619 machine that doesn't implement flock(2), fcntl(2) locking, or lockf(3).
1620 C<flock> is Perl's portable file locking interface, although it locks
1621 only entire files, not records.
1623 Two potentially non-obvious but traditional C<flock> semantics are
1624 that it waits indefinitely until the lock is granted, and that its locks
1625 B<merely advisory>. Such discretionary locks are more flexible, but offer
1626 fewer guarantees. This means that files locked with C<flock> may be
1627 modified by programs that do not also use C<flock>. See L<perlport>,
1628 your port's specific documentation, or your system-specific local manpages
1629 for details. It's best to assume traditional behavior if you're writing
1630 portable programs. (But if you're not, you should as always feel perfectly
1631 free to write for your own system's idiosyncrasies (sometimes called
1632 "features"). Slavish adherence to portability concerns shouldn't get
1633 in the way of your getting your job done.)
1635 OPERATION is one of LOCK_SH, LOCK_EX, or LOCK_UN, possibly combined with
1636 LOCK_NB. These constants are traditionally valued 1, 2, 8 and 4, but
1637 you can use the symbolic names if you import them from the Fcntl module,
1638 either individually, or as a group using the ':flock' tag. LOCK_SH
1639 requests a shared lock, LOCK_EX requests an exclusive lock, and LOCK_UN
1640 releases a previously requested lock. If LOCK_NB is bitwise-or'ed with
1641 LOCK_SH or LOCK_EX then C<flock> will return immediately rather than blocking
1642 waiting for the lock (check the return status to see if you got it).
1644 To avoid the possibility of miscoordination, Perl now flushes FILEHANDLE
1645 before locking or unlocking it.
1647 Note that the emulation built with lockf(3) doesn't provide shared
1648 locks, and it requires that FILEHANDLE be open with write intent. These
1649 are the semantics that lockf(3) implements. Most if not all systems
1650 implement lockf(3) in terms of fcntl(2) locking, though, so the
1651 differing semantics shouldn't bite too many people.
1653 Note also that some versions of C<flock> cannot lock things over the
1654 network; you would need to use the more system-specific C<fcntl> for
1655 that. If you like you can force Perl to ignore your system's flock(2)
1656 function, and so provide its own fcntl(2)-based emulation, by passing
1657 the switch C<-Ud_flock> to the F<Configure> program when you configure
1660 Here's a mailbox appender for BSD systems.
1662 use Fcntl ':flock'; # import LOCK_* constants
1665 flock(MBOX,LOCK_EX);
1666 # and, in case someone appended
1667 # while we were waiting...
1672 flock(MBOX,LOCK_UN);
1675 open(MBOX, ">>/usr/spool/mail/$ENV{'USER'}")
1676 or die "Can't open mailbox: $!";
1679 print MBOX $msg,"\n\n";
1682 On systems that support a real flock(), locks are inherited across fork()
1683 calls, whereas those that must resort to the more capricious fcntl()
1684 function lose the locks, making it harder to write servers.
1686 See also L<DB_File> for other flock() examples.
1690 Does a fork(2) system call to create a new process running the
1691 same program at the same point. It returns the child pid to the
1692 parent process, C<0> to the child process, or C<undef> if the fork is
1693 unsuccessful. File descriptors (and sometimes locks on those descriptors)
1694 are shared, while everything else is copied. On most systems supporting
1695 fork(), great care has gone into making it extremely efficient (for
1696 example, using copy-on-write technology on data pages), making it the
1697 dominant paradigm for multitasking over the last few decades.
1699 Beginning with v5.6.0, Perl will attempt to flush all files opened for
1700 output before forking the child process, but this may not be supported
1701 on some platforms (see L<perlport>). To be safe, you may need to set
1702 C<$|> ($AUTOFLUSH in English) or call the C<autoflush()> method of
1703 C<IO::Handle> on any open handles in order to avoid duplicate output.
1705 If you C<fork> without ever waiting on your children, you will
1706 accumulate zombies. On some systems, you can avoid this by setting
1707 C<$SIG{CHLD}> to C<"IGNORE">. See also L<perlipc> for more examples of
1708 forking and reaping moribund children.
1710 Note that if your forked child inherits system file descriptors like
1711 STDIN and STDOUT that are actually connected by a pipe or socket, even
1712 if you exit, then the remote server (such as, say, a CGI script or a
1713 backgrounded job launched from a remote shell) won't think you're done.
1714 You should reopen those to F</dev/null> if it's any issue.
1718 Declare a picture format for use by the C<write> function. For
1722 Test: @<<<<<<<< @||||| @>>>>>
1723 $str, $%, '$' . int($num)
1727 $num = $cost/$quantity;
1731 See L<perlform> for many details and examples.
1733 =item formline PICTURE,LIST
1735 This is an internal function used by C<format>s, though you may call it,
1736 too. It formats (see L<perlform>) a list of values according to the
1737 contents of PICTURE, placing the output into the format output
1738 accumulator, C<$^A> (or C<$ACCUMULATOR> in English).
1739 Eventually, when a C<write> is done, the contents of
1740 C<$^A> are written to some filehandle, but you could also read C<$^A>
1741 yourself and then set C<$^A> back to C<"">. Note that a format typically
1742 does one C<formline> per line of form, but the C<formline> function itself
1743 doesn't care how many newlines are embedded in the PICTURE. This means
1744 that the C<~> and C<~~> tokens will treat the entire PICTURE as a single line.
1745 You may therefore need to use multiple formlines to implement a single
1746 record format, just like the format compiler.
1748 Be careful if you put double quotes around the picture, because an C<@>
1749 character may be taken to mean the beginning of an array name.
1750 C<formline> always returns true. See L<perlform> for other examples.
1752 =item getc FILEHANDLE
1756 Returns the next character from the input file attached to FILEHANDLE,
1757 or the undefined value at end of file, or if there was an error.
1758 If FILEHANDLE is omitted, reads from STDIN. This is not particularly
1759 efficient. However, it cannot be used by itself to fetch single
1760 characters without waiting for the user to hit enter. For that, try
1761 something more like:
1764 system "stty cbreak </dev/tty >/dev/tty 2>&1";
1767 system "stty", '-icanon', 'eol', "\001";
1773 system "stty -cbreak </dev/tty >/dev/tty 2>&1";
1776 system "stty", 'icanon', 'eol', '^@'; # ASCII null
1780 Determination of whether $BSD_STYLE should be set
1781 is left as an exercise to the reader.
1783 The C<POSIX::getattr> function can do this more portably on
1784 systems purporting POSIX compliance. See also the C<Term::ReadKey>
1785 module from your nearest CPAN site; details on CPAN can be found on
1790 Implements the C library function of the same name, which on most
1791 systems returns the current login from F</etc/utmp>, if any. If null,
1794 $login = getlogin || getpwuid($<) || "Kilroy";
1796 Do not consider C<getlogin> for authentication: it is not as
1797 secure as C<getpwuid>.
1799 =item getpeername SOCKET
1801 Returns the packed sockaddr address of other end of the SOCKET connection.
1804 $hersockaddr = getpeername(SOCK);
1805 ($port, $iaddr) = sockaddr_in($hersockaddr);
1806 $herhostname = gethostbyaddr($iaddr, AF_INET);
1807 $herstraddr = inet_ntoa($iaddr);
1811 Returns the current process group for the specified PID. Use
1812 a PID of C<0> to get the current process group for the
1813 current process. Will raise an exception if used on a machine that
1814 doesn't implement getpgrp(2). If PID is omitted, returns process
1815 group of current process. Note that the POSIX version of C<getpgrp>
1816 does not accept a PID argument, so only C<PID==0> is truly portable.
1820 Returns the process id of the parent process.
1822 =item getpriority WHICH,WHO
1824 Returns the current priority for a process, a process group, or a user.
1825 (See L<getpriority(2)>.) Will raise a fatal exception if used on a
1826 machine that doesn't implement getpriority(2).
1832 =item gethostbyname NAME
1834 =item getnetbyname NAME
1836 =item getprotobyname NAME
1842 =item getservbyname NAME,PROTO
1844 =item gethostbyaddr ADDR,ADDRTYPE
1846 =item getnetbyaddr ADDR,ADDRTYPE
1848 =item getprotobynumber NUMBER
1850 =item getservbyport PORT,PROTO
1868 =item sethostent STAYOPEN
1870 =item setnetent STAYOPEN
1872 =item setprotoent STAYOPEN
1874 =item setservent STAYOPEN
1888 These routines perform the same functions as their counterparts in the
1889 system library. In list context, the return values from the
1890 various get routines are as follows:
1892 ($name,$passwd,$uid,$gid,
1893 $quota,$comment,$gcos,$dir,$shell,$expire) = getpw*
1894 ($name,$passwd,$gid,$members) = getgr*
1895 ($name,$aliases,$addrtype,$length,@addrs) = gethost*
1896 ($name,$aliases,$addrtype,$net) = getnet*
1897 ($name,$aliases,$proto) = getproto*
1898 ($name,$aliases,$port,$proto) = getserv*
1900 (If the entry doesn't exist you get a null list.)
1902 The exact meaning of the $gcos field varies but it usually contains
1903 the real name of the user (as opposed to the login name) and other
1904 information pertaining to the user. Beware, however, that in many
1905 system users are able to change this information and therefore it
1906 cannot be trusted and therefore the $gcos is tainted (see
1907 L<perlsec>). The $passwd and $shell, user's encrypted password and
1908 login shell, are also tainted, because of the same reason.
1910 In scalar context, you get the name, unless the function was a
1911 lookup by name, in which case you get the other thing, whatever it is.
1912 (If the entry doesn't exist you get the undefined value.) For example:
1914 $uid = getpwnam($name);
1915 $name = getpwuid($num);
1917 $gid = getgrnam($name);
1918 $name = getgrgid($num;
1922 In I<getpw*()> the fields $quota, $comment, and $expire are special
1923 cases in the sense that in many systems they are unsupported. If the
1924 $quota is unsupported, it is an empty scalar. If it is supported, it
1925 usually encodes the disk quota. If the $comment field is unsupported,
1926 it is an empty scalar. If it is supported it usually encodes some
1927 administrative comment about the user. In some systems the $quota
1928 field may be $change or $age, fields that have to do with password
1929 aging. In some systems the $comment field may be $class. The $expire
1930 field, if present, encodes the expiration period of the account or the
1931 password. For the availability and the exact meaning of these fields
1932 in your system, please consult your getpwnam(3) documentation and your
1933 F<pwd.h> file. You can also find out from within Perl what your
1934 $quota and $comment fields mean and whether you have the $expire field
1935 by using the C<Config> module and the values C<d_pwquota>, C<d_pwage>,
1936 C<d_pwchange>, C<d_pwcomment>, and C<d_pwexpire>. Shadow password
1937 files are only supported if your vendor has implemented them in the
1938 intuitive fashion that calling the regular C library routines gets the
1939 shadow versions if you're running under privilege or if there exists
1940 the shadow(3) functions as found in System V ( this includes Solaris
1941 and Linux.) Those systems which implement a proprietary shadow password
1942 facility are unlikely to be supported.
1944 The $members value returned by I<getgr*()> is a space separated list of
1945 the login names of the members of the group.
1947 For the I<gethost*()> functions, if the C<h_errno> variable is supported in
1948 C, it will be returned to you via C<$?> if the function call fails. The
1949 C<@addrs> value returned by a successful call is a list of the raw
1950 addresses returned by the corresponding system library call. In the
1951 Internet domain, each address is four bytes long and you can unpack it
1952 by saying something like:
1954 ($a,$b,$c,$d) = unpack('C4',$addr[0]);
1956 The Socket library makes this slightly easier:
1959 $iaddr = inet_aton("127.1"); # or whatever address
1960 $name = gethostbyaddr($iaddr, AF_INET);
1962 # or going the other way
1963 $straddr = inet_ntoa($iaddr);
1965 If you get tired of remembering which element of the return list
1966 contains which return value, by-name interfaces are provided
1967 in standard modules: C<File::stat>, C<Net::hostent>, C<Net::netent>,
1968 C<Net::protoent>, C<Net::servent>, C<Time::gmtime>, C<Time::localtime>,
1969 and C<User::grent>. These override the normal built-ins, supplying
1970 versions that return objects with the appropriate names
1971 for each field. For example:
1975 $is_his = (stat($filename)->uid == pwent($whoever)->uid);
1977 Even though it looks like they're the same method calls (uid),
1978 they aren't, because a C<File::stat> object is different from
1979 a C<User::pwent> object.
1981 =item getsockname SOCKET
1983 Returns the packed sockaddr address of this end of the SOCKET connection,
1984 in case you don't know the address because you have several different
1985 IPs that the connection might have come in on.
1988 $mysockaddr = getsockname(SOCK);
1989 ($port, $myaddr) = sockaddr_in($mysockaddr);
1990 printf "Connect to %s [%s]\n",
1991 scalar gethostbyaddr($myaddr, AF_INET),
1994 =item getsockopt SOCKET,LEVEL,OPTNAME
1996 Returns the socket option requested, or undef if there is an error.
2002 Returns the value of EXPR with filename expansions such as the
2003 standard Unix shell F</bin/csh> would do. This is the internal function
2004 implementing the C<< <*.c> >> operator, but you can use it directly.
2005 If EXPR is omitted, C<$_> is used. The C<< <*.c> >> operator is
2006 discussed in more detail in L<perlop/"I/O Operators">.
2008 Beginning with v5.6.0, this operator is implemented using the standard
2009 C<File::Glob> extension. See L<File::Glob> for details.
2013 Converts a time as returned by the time function to an 8-element list
2014 with the time localized for the standard Greenwich time zone.
2015 Typically used as follows:
2018 ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday) =
2021 All list elements are numeric, and come straight out of the C `struct
2022 tm'. $sec, $min, and $hour are the seconds, minutes, and hours of the
2023 specified time. $mday is the day of the month, and $mon is the month
2024 itself, in the range C<0..11> with 0 indicating January and 11
2025 indicating December. $year is the number of years since 1900. That
2026 is, $year is C<123> in year 2023. $wday is the day of the week, with
2027 0 indicating Sunday and 3 indicating Wednesday. $yday is the day of
2028 the year, in the range C<0..364> (or C<0..365> in leap years.)
2030 Note that the $year element is I<not> simply the last two digits of
2031 the year. If you assume it is, then you create non-Y2K-compliant
2032 programs--and you wouldn't want to do that, would you?
2034 The proper way to get a complete 4-digit year is simply:
2038 And to get the last two digits of the year (e.g., '01' in 2001) do:
2040 $year = sprintf("%02d", $year % 100);
2042 If EXPR is omitted, C<gmtime()> uses the current time (C<gmtime(time)>).
2044 In scalar context, C<gmtime()> returns the ctime(3) value:
2046 $now_string = gmtime; # e.g., "Thu Oct 13 04:54:34 1994"
2048 Also see the C<timegm> function provided by the C<Time::Local> module,
2049 and the strftime(3) function available via the POSIX module.
2051 This scalar value is B<not> locale dependent (see L<perllocale>), but
2052 is instead a Perl builtin. Also see the C<Time::Local> module, and the
2053 strftime(3) and mktime(3) functions available via the POSIX module. To
2054 get somewhat similar but locale dependent date strings, set up your
2055 locale environment variables appropriately (please see L<perllocale>)
2056 and try for example:
2058 use POSIX qw(strftime);
2059 $now_string = strftime "%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Y", gmtime;
2061 Note that the C<%a> and C<%b> escapes, which represent the short forms
2062 of the day of the week and the month of the year, may not necessarily
2063 be three characters wide in all locales.
2071 The C<goto-LABEL> form finds the statement labeled with LABEL and resumes
2072 execution there. It may not be used to go into any construct that
2073 requires initialization, such as a subroutine or a C<foreach> loop. It
2074 also can't be used to go into a construct that is optimized away,
2075 or to get out of a block or subroutine given to C<sort>.
2076 It can be used to go almost anywhere else within the dynamic scope,
2077 including out of subroutines, but it's usually better to use some other
2078 construct such as C<last> or C<die>. The author of Perl has never felt the
2079 need to use this form of C<goto> (in Perl, that is--C is another matter).
2081 The C<goto-EXPR> form expects a label name, whose scope will be resolved
2082 dynamically. This allows for computed C<goto>s per FORTRAN, but isn't
2083 necessarily recommended if you're optimizing for maintainability:
2085 goto ("FOO", "BAR", "GLARCH")[$i];
2087 The C<goto-&NAME> form is quite different from the other forms of C<goto>.
2088 In fact, it isn't a goto in the normal sense at all, and doesn't have
2089 the stigma associated with other gotos. Instead, it
2090 substitutes a call to the named subroutine for the currently running
2091 subroutine. This is used by C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines that wish to load
2092 another subroutine and then pretend that the other subroutine had been
2093 called in the first place (except that any modifications to C<@_>
2094 in the current subroutine are propagated to the other subroutine.)
2095 After the C<goto>, not even C<caller> will be able to tell that this
2096 routine was called first.
2098 NAME needn't be the name of a subroutine; it can be a scalar variable
2099 containing a code reference, or a block which evaluates to a code
2102 =item grep BLOCK LIST
2104 =item grep EXPR,LIST
2106 This is similar in spirit to, but not the same as, grep(1) and its
2107 relatives. In particular, it is not limited to using regular expressions.
2109 Evaluates the BLOCK or EXPR for each element of LIST (locally setting
2110 C<$_> to each element) and returns the list value consisting of those
2111 elements for which the expression evaluated to true. In scalar
2112 context, returns the number of times the expression was true.
2114 @foo = grep(!/^#/, @bar); # weed out comments
2118 @foo = grep {!/^#/} @bar; # weed out comments
2120 Note that C<$_> is an alias to the list value, so it can be used to
2121 modify the elements of the LIST. While this is useful and supported,
2122 it can cause bizarre results if the elements of LIST are not variables.
2123 Similarly, grep returns aliases into the original list, much as a for
2124 loop's index variable aliases the list elements. That is, modifying an
2125 element of a list returned by grep (for example, in a C<foreach>, C<map>
2126 or another C<grep>) actually modifies the element in the original list.
2127 This is usually something to be avoided when writing clear code.
2129 See also L</map> for a list composed of the results of the BLOCK or EXPR.
2135 Interprets EXPR as a hex string and returns the corresponding value.
2136 (To convert strings that might start with either 0, 0x, or 0b, see
2137 L</oct>.) If EXPR is omitted, uses C<$_>.
2139 print hex '0xAf'; # prints '175'
2140 print hex 'aF'; # same
2142 Hex strings may only represent integers. Strings that would cause
2143 integer overflow trigger a warning. Leading whitespace is not stripped,
2148 There is no builtin C<import> function. It is just an ordinary
2149 method (subroutine) defined (or inherited) by modules that wish to export
2150 names to another module. The C<use> function calls the C<import> method
2151 for the package used. See also L</use>, L<perlmod>, and L<Exporter>.
2153 =item index STR,SUBSTR,POSITION
2155 =item index STR,SUBSTR
2157 The index function searches for one string within another, but without
2158 the wildcard-like behavior of a full regular-expression pattern match.
2159 It returns the position of the first occurrence of SUBSTR in STR at
2160 or after POSITION. If POSITION is omitted, starts searching from the
2161 beginning of the string. The return value is based at C<0> (or whatever
2162 you've set the C<$[> variable to--but don't do that). If the substring
2163 is not found, returns one less than the base, ordinarily C<-1>.
2169 Returns the integer portion of EXPR. If EXPR is omitted, uses C<$_>.
2170 You should not use this function for rounding: one because it truncates
2171 towards C<0>, and two because machine representations of floating point
2172 numbers can sometimes produce counterintuitive results. For example,
2173 C<int(-6.725/0.025)> produces -268 rather than the correct -269; that's
2174 because it's really more like -268.99999999999994315658 instead. Usually,
2175 the C<sprintf>, C<printf>, or the C<POSIX::floor> and C<POSIX::ceil>
2176 functions will serve you better than will int().
2178 =item ioctl FILEHANDLE,FUNCTION,SCALAR
2180 Implements the ioctl(2) function. You'll probably first have to say
2182 require "ioctl.ph"; # probably in /usr/local/lib/perl/ioctl.ph
2184 to get the correct function definitions. If F<ioctl.ph> doesn't
2185 exist or doesn't have the correct definitions you'll have to roll your
2186 own, based on your C header files such as F<< <sys/ioctl.h> >>.
2187 (There is a Perl script called B<h2ph> that comes with the Perl kit that
2188 may help you in this, but it's nontrivial.) SCALAR will be read and/or
2189 written depending on the FUNCTION--a pointer to the string value of SCALAR
2190 will be passed as the third argument of the actual C<ioctl> call. (If SCALAR
2191 has no string value but does have a numeric value, that value will be
2192 passed rather than a pointer to the string value. To guarantee this to be
2193 true, add a C<0> to the scalar before using it.) The C<pack> and C<unpack>
2194 functions may be needed to manipulate the values of structures used by
2197 The return value of C<ioctl> (and C<fcntl>) is as follows:
2199 if OS returns: then Perl returns:
2201 0 string "0 but true"
2202 anything else that number
2204 Thus Perl returns true on success and false on failure, yet you can
2205 still easily determine the actual value returned by the operating
2208 $retval = ioctl(...) || -1;
2209 printf "System returned %d\n", $retval;
2211 The special string "C<0> but true" is exempt from B<-w> complaints
2212 about improper numeric conversions.
2214 Here's an example of setting a filehandle named C<REMOTE> to be
2215 non-blocking at the system level. You'll have to negotiate C<$|>
2216 on your own, though.
2218 use Fcntl qw(F_GETFL F_SETFL O_NONBLOCK);
2220 $flags = fcntl(REMOTE, F_GETFL, 0)
2221 or die "Can't get flags for the socket: $!\n";
2223 $flags = fcntl(REMOTE, F_SETFL, $flags | O_NONBLOCK)
2224 or die "Can't set flags for the socket: $!\n";
2226 =item join EXPR,LIST
2228 Joins the separate strings of LIST into a single string with fields
2229 separated by the value of EXPR, and returns that new string. Example:
2231 $rec = join(':', $login,$passwd,$uid,$gid,$gcos,$home,$shell);
2233 Beware that unlike C<split>, C<join> doesn't take a pattern as its
2234 first argument. Compare L</split>.
2238 Returns a list consisting of all the keys of the named hash. (In
2239 scalar context, returns the number of keys.) The keys are returned in
2240 an apparently random order. The actual random order is subject to
2241 change in future versions of perl, but it is guaranteed to be the same
2242 order as either the C<values> or C<each> function produces (given
2243 that the hash has not been modified). As a side effect, it resets
2246 Here is yet another way to print your environment:
2249 @values = values %ENV;
2251 print pop(@keys), '=', pop(@values), "\n";
2254 or how about sorted by key:
2256 foreach $key (sort(keys %ENV)) {
2257 print $key, '=', $ENV{$key}, "\n";
2260 The returned values are copies of the original keys in the hash, so
2261 modifying them will not affect the original hash. Compare L</values>.
2263 To sort a hash by value, you'll need to use a C<sort> function.
2264 Here's a descending numeric sort of a hash by its values:
2266 foreach $key (sort { $hash{$b} <=> $hash{$a} } keys %hash) {
2267 printf "%4d %s\n", $hash{$key}, $key;
2270 As an lvalue C<keys> allows you to increase the number of hash buckets
2271 allocated for the given hash. This can gain you a measure of efficiency if
2272 you know the hash is going to get big. (This is similar to pre-extending
2273 an array by assigning a larger number to $#array.) If you say
2277 then C<%hash> will have at least 200 buckets allocated for it--256 of them,
2278 in fact, since it rounds up to the next power of two. These
2279 buckets will be retained even if you do C<%hash = ()>, use C<undef
2280 %hash> if you want to free the storage while C<%hash> is still in scope.
2281 You can't shrink the number of buckets allocated for the hash using
2282 C<keys> in this way (but you needn't worry about doing this by accident,
2283 as trying has no effect).
2285 See also C<each>, C<values> and C<sort>.
2287 =item kill SIGNAL, LIST
2289 Sends a signal to a list of processes. Returns the number of
2290 processes successfully signaled (which is not necessarily the
2291 same as the number actually killed).
2293 $cnt = kill 1, $child1, $child2;
2296 If SIGNAL is zero, no signal is sent to the process. This is a
2297 useful way to check that the process is alive and hasn't changed
2298 its UID. See L<perlport> for notes on the portability of this
2301 Unlike in the shell, if SIGNAL is negative, it kills
2302 process groups instead of processes. (On System V, a negative I<PROCESS>
2303 number will also kill process groups, but that's not portable.) That
2304 means you usually want to use positive not negative signals. You may also
2305 use a signal name in quotes. See L<perlipc/"Signals"> for details.
2311 The C<last> command is like the C<break> statement in C (as used in
2312 loops); it immediately exits the loop in question. If the LABEL is
2313 omitted, the command refers to the innermost enclosing loop. The
2314 C<continue> block, if any, is not executed:
2316 LINE: while (<STDIN>) {
2317 last LINE if /^$/; # exit when done with header
2321 C<last> cannot be used to exit a block which returns a value such as
2322 C<eval {}>, C<sub {}> or C<do {}>, and should not be used to exit
2323 a grep() or map() operation.
2325 Note that a block by itself is semantically identical to a loop
2326 that executes once. Thus C<last> can be used to effect an early
2327 exit out of such a block.
2329 See also L</continue> for an illustration of how C<last>, C<next>, and
2336 Returns a lowercased version of EXPR. This is the internal function
2337 implementing the C<\L> escape in double-quoted strings. Respects
2338 current LC_CTYPE locale if C<use locale> in force. See L<perllocale>
2339 and L<perlunicode> for more details about locale and Unicode support.
2341 If EXPR is omitted, uses C<$_>.
2347 Returns the value of EXPR with the first character lowercased. This
2348 is the internal function implementing the C<\l> escape in
2349 double-quoted strings. Respects current LC_CTYPE locale if C<use
2350 locale> in force. See L<perllocale> and L<perlunicode> for more
2351 details about locale and Unicode support.
2353 If EXPR is omitted, uses C<$_>.
2359 Returns the length in characters of the value of EXPR. If EXPR is
2360 omitted, returns length of C<$_>. Note that this cannot be used on
2361 an entire array or hash to find out how many elements these have.
2362 For that, use C<scalar @array> and C<scalar keys %hash> respectively.
2364 =item link OLDFILE,NEWFILE
2366 Creates a new filename linked to the old filename. Returns true for
2367 success, false otherwise.
2369 =item listen SOCKET,QUEUESIZE
2371 Does the same thing that the listen system call does. Returns true if
2372 it succeeded, false otherwise. See the example in
2373 L<perlipc/"Sockets: Client/Server Communication">.
2377 You really probably want to be using C<my> instead, because C<local> isn't
2378 what most people think of as "local". See
2379 L<perlsub/"Private Variables via my()"> for details.
2381 A local modifies the listed variables to be local to the enclosing
2382 block, file, or eval. If more than one value is listed, the list must
2383 be placed in parentheses. See L<perlsub/"Temporary Values via local()">
2384 for details, including issues with tied arrays and hashes.
2386 =item localtime EXPR
2388 Converts a time as returned by the time function to a 9-element list
2389 with the time analyzed for the local time zone. Typically used as
2393 ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) =
2396 All list elements are numeric, and come straight out of the C `struct
2397 tm'. $sec, $min, and $hour are the seconds, minutes, and hours of the
2398 specified time. $mday is the day of the month, and $mon is the month
2399 itself, in the range C<0..11> with 0 indicating January and 11
2400 indicating December. $year is the number of years since 1900. That
2401 is, $year is C<123> in year 2023. $wday is the day of the week, with
2402 0 indicating Sunday and 3 indicating Wednesday. $yday is the day of
2403 the year, in the range C<0..364> (or C<0..365> in leap years.) $isdst
2404 is true if the specified time occurs during daylight savings time,
2407 Note that the $year element is I<not> simply the last two digits of
2408 the year. If you assume it is, then you create non-Y2K-compliant
2409 programs--and you wouldn't want to do that, would you?
2411 The proper way to get a complete 4-digit year is simply:
2415 And to get the last two digits of the year (e.g., '01' in 2001) do:
2417 $year = sprintf("%02d", $year % 100);
2419 If EXPR is omitted, C<localtime()> uses the current time (C<localtime(time)>).
2421 In scalar context, C<localtime()> returns the ctime(3) value:
2423 $now_string = localtime; # e.g., "Thu Oct 13 04:54:34 1994"
2425 This scalar value is B<not> locale dependent, see L<perllocale>, but
2426 instead a Perl builtin. Also see the C<Time::Local> module
2427 (to convert the second, minutes, hours, ... back to seconds since the
2428 stroke of midnight the 1st of January 1970, the value returned by
2429 time()), and the strftime(3) and mktime(3) functions available via the
2430 POSIX module. To get somewhat similar but locale dependent date
2431 strings, set up your locale environment variables appropriately
2432 (please see L<perllocale>) and try for example:
2434 use POSIX qw(strftime);
2435 $now_string = strftime "%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Y", localtime;
2437 Note that the C<%a> and C<%b>, the short forms of the day of the week
2438 and the month of the year, may not necessarily be three characters wide.
2442 This function places an advisory lock on a variable, subroutine,
2443 or referenced object contained in I<THING> until the lock goes out
2444 of scope. This is a built-in function only if your version of Perl
2445 was built with threading enabled, and if you've said C<use Thread>.
2446 Otherwise a user-defined function by this name will be called.
2453 Returns the natural logarithm (base I<e>) of EXPR. If EXPR is omitted,
2454 returns log of C<$_>. To get the log of another base, use basic algebra:
2455 The base-N log of a number is equal to the natural log of that number
2456 divided by the natural log of N. For example:
2460 return log($n)/log(10);
2463 See also L</exp> for the inverse operation.
2469 Does the same thing as the C<stat> function (including setting the
2470 special C<_> filehandle) but stats a symbolic link instead of the file
2471 the symbolic link points to. If symbolic links are unimplemented on
2472 your system, a normal C<stat> is done.
2474 If EXPR is omitted, stats C<$_>.
2478 The match operator. See L<perlop>.
2480 =item map BLOCK LIST
2484 Evaluates the BLOCK or EXPR for each element of LIST (locally setting
2485 C<$_> to each element) and returns the list value composed of the
2486 results of each such evaluation. In scalar context, returns the
2487 total number of elements so generated. Evaluates BLOCK or EXPR in
2488 list context, so each element of LIST may produce zero, one, or
2489 more elements in the returned value.
2491 @chars = map(chr, @nums);
2493 translates a list of numbers to the corresponding characters. And
2495 %hash = map { getkey($_) => $_ } @array;
2497 is just a funny way to write
2500 foreach $_ (@array) {
2501 $hash{getkey($_)} = $_;
2504 Note that C<$_> is an alias to the list value, so it can be used to
2505 modify the elements of the LIST. While this is useful and supported,
2506 it can cause bizarre results if the elements of LIST are not variables.
2507 Using a regular C<foreach> loop for this purpose would be clearer in
2508 most cases. See also L</grep> for an array composed of those items of
2509 the original list for which the BLOCK or EXPR evaluates to true.
2511 C<{> starts both hash references and blocks, so C<map { ...> could be either
2512 the start of map BLOCK LIST or map EXPR, LIST. Because perl doesn't look
2513 ahead for the closing C<}> it has to take a guess at which its dealing with
2514 based what it finds just after the C<{>. Usually it gets it right, but if it
2515 doesn't it won't realize something is wrong until it gets to the C<}> and
2516 encounters the missing (or unexpected) comma. The syntax error will be
2517 reported close to the C<}> but you'll need to change something near the C<{>
2518 such as using a unary C<+> to give perl some help:
2520 %hash = map { "\L$_", 1 } @array # perl guesses EXPR. wrong
2521 %hash = map { +"\L$_", 1 } @array # perl guesses BLOCK. right
2522 %hash = map { ("\L$_", 1) } @array # this also works
2523 %hash = map { lc($_), 1 } @array # as does this.
2524 %hash = map +( lc($_), 1 ), @array # this is EXPR and works!
2526 %hash = map ( lc($_), 1 ), @array # evaluates to (1, @array)
2528 or to force an anon hash constructor use C<+{>
2530 @hashes = map +{ lc($_), 1 }, @array # EXPR, so needs , at end
2532 and you get list of anonymous hashes each with only 1 entry.
2534 =item mkdir FILENAME,MASK
2536 =item mkdir FILENAME
2538 Creates the directory specified by FILENAME, with permissions
2539 specified by MASK (as modified by C<umask>). If it succeeds it
2540 returns true, otherwise it returns false and sets C<$!> (errno).
2541 If omitted, MASK defaults to 0777.
2543 In general, it is better to create directories with permissive MASK,
2544 and let the user modify that with their C<umask>, than it is to supply
2545 a restrictive MASK and give the user no way to be more permissive.
2546 The exceptions to this rule are when the file or directory should be
2547 kept private (mail files, for instance). The perlfunc(1) entry on
2548 C<umask> discusses the choice of MASK in more detail.
2550 Note that according to the POSIX 1003.1-1996 the FILENAME may have any
2551 number of trailing slashes. Some operating and filesystems do not get
2552 this right, so Perl automatically removes all trailing slashes to keep
2555 =item msgctl ID,CMD,ARG
2557 Calls the System V IPC function msgctl(2). You'll probably have to say
2561 first to get the correct constant definitions. If CMD is C<IPC_STAT>,
2562 then ARG must be a variable which will hold the returned C<msqid_ds>
2563 structure. Returns like C<ioctl>: the undefined value for error,
2564 C<"0 but true"> for zero, or the actual return value otherwise. See also
2565 L<perlipc/"SysV IPC">, C<IPC::SysV>, and C<IPC::Semaphore> documentation.
2567 =item msgget KEY,FLAGS
2569 Calls the System V IPC function msgget(2). Returns the message queue
2570 id, or the undefined value if there is an error. See also
2571 L<perlipc/"SysV IPC"> and C<IPC::SysV> and C<IPC::Msg> documentation.
2573 =item msgrcv ID,VAR,SIZE,TYPE,FLAGS
2575 Calls the System V IPC function msgrcv to receive a message from
2576 message queue ID into variable VAR with a maximum message size of
2577 SIZE. Note that when a message is received, the message type as a
2578 native long integer will be the first thing in VAR, followed by the
2579 actual message. This packing may be opened with C<unpack("l! a*")>.
2580 Taints the variable. Returns true if successful, or false if there is
2581 an error. See also L<perlipc/"SysV IPC">, C<IPC::SysV>, and
2582 C<IPC::SysV::Msg> documentation.
2584 =item msgsnd ID,MSG,FLAGS
2586 Calls the System V IPC function msgsnd to send the message MSG to the
2587 message queue ID. MSG must begin with the native long integer message
2588 type, and be followed by the length of the actual message, and finally
2589 the message itself. This kind of packing can be achieved with
2590 C<pack("l! a*", $type, $message)>. Returns true if successful,
2591 or false if there is an error. See also C<IPC::SysV>
2592 and C<IPC::SysV::Msg> documentation.
2596 =item my EXPR : ATTRIBUTES
2598 A C<my> declares the listed variables to be local (lexically) to the
2599 enclosing block, file, or C<eval>. If
2600 more than one value is listed, the list must be placed in parentheses. See
2601 L<perlsub/"Private Variables via my()"> for details.
2607 The C<next> command is like the C<continue> statement in C; it starts
2608 the next iteration of the loop:
2610 LINE: while (<STDIN>) {
2611 next LINE if /^#/; # discard comments
2615 Note that if there were a C<continue> block on the above, it would get
2616 executed even on discarded lines. If the LABEL is omitted, the command
2617 refers to the innermost enclosing loop.
2619 C<next> cannot be used to exit a block which returns a value such as
2620 C<eval {}>, C<sub {}> or C<do {}>, and should not be used to exit
2621 a grep() or map() operation.
2623 Note that a block by itself is semantically identical to a loop
2624 that executes once. Thus C<next> will exit such a block early.
2626 See also L</continue> for an illustration of how C<last>, C<next>, and
2629 =item no Module LIST
2631 See the L</use> function, which C<no> is the opposite of.
2637 Interprets EXPR as an octal string and returns the corresponding
2638 value. (If EXPR happens to start off with C<0x>, interprets it as a
2639 hex string. If EXPR starts off with C<0b>, it is interpreted as a
2640 binary string. Leading whitespace is ignored in all three cases.)
2641 The following will handle decimal, binary, octal, and hex in the standard
2644 $val = oct($val) if $val =~ /^0/;
2646 If EXPR is omitted, uses C<$_>. To go the other way (produce a number
2647 in octal), use sprintf() or printf():
2649 $perms = (stat("filename"))[2] & 07777;
2650 $oct_perms = sprintf "%lo", $perms;
2652 The oct() function is commonly used when a string such as C<644> needs
2653 to be converted into a file mode, for example. (Although perl will
2654 automatically convert strings into numbers as needed, this automatic
2655 conversion assumes base 10.)
2657 =item open FILEHANDLE,EXPR
2659 =item open FILEHANDLE,MODE,EXPR
2661 =item open FILEHANDLE,MODE,EXPR,LIST
2663 =item open FILEHANDLE
2665 Opens the file whose filename is given by EXPR, and associates it with
2668 (The following is a comprehensive reference to open(): for a gentler
2669 introduction you may consider L<perlopentut>.)
2671 If FILEHANDLE is an undefined lexical (C<my>) variable the variable is
2672 assigned a reference to a new anonymous filehandle, otherwise if
2673 FILEHANDLE is an expression, its value is used as the name of the real
2674 filehandle wanted. (This is considered a symbolic reference, so C<use
2675 strict 'refs'> should I<not> be in effect.)
2677 If EXPR is omitted, the scalar variable of the same name as the
2678 FILEHANDLE contains the filename. (Note that lexical variables--those
2679 declared with C<my>--will not work for this purpose; so if you're
2680 using C<my>, specify EXPR in your call to open.)
2682 If three or more arguments are specified then the mode of opening and
2683 the file name are separate. If MODE is C<< '<' >> or nothing, the file
2684 is opened for input. If MODE is C<< '>' >>, the file is truncated and
2685 opened for output, being created if necessary. If MODE is C<<< '>>' >>>,
2686 the file is opened for appending, again being created if necessary.
2688 You can put a C<'+'> in front of the C<< '>' >> or C<< '<' >> to
2689 indicate that you want both read and write access to the file; thus
2690 C<< '+<' >> is almost always preferred for read/write updates--the C<<
2691 '+>' >> mode would clobber the file first. You can't usually use
2692 either read-write mode for updating textfiles, since they have
2693 variable length records. See the B<-i> switch in L<perlrun> for a
2694 better approach. The file is created with permissions of C<0666>
2695 modified by the process' C<umask> value.
2697 These various prefixes correspond to the fopen(3) modes of C<'r'>,
2698 C<'r+'>, C<'w'>, C<'w+'>, C<'a'>, and C<'a+'>.
2700 In the 2-arguments (and 1-argument) form of the call the mode and
2701 filename should be concatenated (in this order), possibly separated by
2702 spaces. It is possible to omit the mode in these forms if the mode is
2705 If the filename begins with C<'|'>, the filename is interpreted as a
2706 command to which output is to be piped, and if the filename ends with a
2707 C<'|'>, the filename is interpreted as a command which pipes output to
2708 us. See L<perlipc/"Using open() for IPC">
2709 for more examples of this. (You are not allowed to C<open> to a command
2710 that pipes both in I<and> out, but see L<IPC::Open2>, L<IPC::Open3>,
2711 and L<perlipc/"Bidirectional Communication with Another Process">
2714 For three or more arguments if MODE is C<'|-'>, the filename is
2715 interpreted as a command to which output is to be piped, and if MODE
2716 is C<'-|'>, the filename is interpreted as a command which pipes
2717 output to us. In the 2-arguments (and 1-argument) form one should
2718 replace dash (C<'-'>) with the command.
2719 See L<perlipc/"Using open() for IPC"> for more examples of this.
2720 (You are not allowed to C<open> to a command that pipes both in I<and>
2721 out, but see L<IPC::Open2>, L<IPC::Open3>, and
2722 L<perlipc/"Bidirectional Communication"> for alternatives.)
2724 In the three-or-more argument form of pipe opens, if LIST is specified
2725 (extra arguments after the command name) then LIST becomes arguments
2726 to the command invoked if the platform supports it. The meaning of
2727 C<open> with more than three arguments for non-pipe modes is not yet
2728 specified. Experimental "layers" may give extra LIST arguments
2731 In the 2-arguments (and 1-argument) form opening C<'-'> opens STDIN
2732 and opening C<< '>-' >> opens STDOUT.
2734 You may use the three-argument form of open to specify
2735 I<I/O disciplines> that affect how the input and output
2736 are processed: see L</binmode> and L<open>. For example
2738 open(FH, "<:utf8", "file")
2740 will open the UTF-8 encoded file containing Unicode characters,
2741 see L<perluniintro>.
2743 Open returns nonzero upon success, the undefined value otherwise. If
2744 the C<open> involved a pipe, the return value happens to be the pid of
2747 If you're running Perl on a system that distinguishes between text
2748 files and binary files, then you should check out L</binmode> for tips
2749 for dealing with this. The key distinction between systems that need
2750 C<binmode> and those that don't is their text file formats. Systems
2751 like Unix, MacOS, and Plan9, which delimit lines with a single
2752 character, and which encode that character in C as C<"\n">, do not
2753 need C<binmode>. The rest need it.
2755 In the three argument form MODE may also contain a list of IO "layers"
2756 (see L<open> and L<PerlIO> for more details) to be applied to the
2757 handle. This can be used to achieve the effect of C<binmode> as well
2758 as more complex behaviours.
2760 When opening a file, it's usually a bad idea to continue normal execution
2761 if the request failed, so C<open> is frequently used in connection with
2762 C<die>. Even if C<die> won't do what you want (say, in a CGI script,
2763 where you want to make a nicely formatted error message (but there are
2764 modules that can help with that problem)) you should always check
2765 the return value from opening a file. The infrequent exception is when
2766 working with an unopened filehandle is actually what you want to do.
2768 As a special case the 3 arg form with a read/write mode and the third
2769 argument being C<undef>:
2771 open(TMP, "+>", undef) or die ...
2773 opens a filehandle to an anonymous temporary file.
2778 open ARTICLE or die "Can't find article $ARTICLE: $!\n";
2779 while (<ARTICLE>) {...
2781 open(LOG, '>>/usr/spool/news/twitlog'); # (log is reserved)
2782 # if the open fails, output is discarded
2784 open(DBASE, '+<', 'dbase.mine') # open for update
2785 or die "Can't open 'dbase.mine' for update: $!";
2787 open(DBASE, '+<dbase.mine') # ditto
2788 or die "Can't open 'dbase.mine' for update: $!";
2790 open(ARTICLE, '-|', "caesar <$article") # decrypt article
2791 or die "Can't start caesar: $!";
2793 open(ARTICLE, "caesar <$article |") # ditto
2794 or die "Can't start caesar: $!";
2796 open(EXTRACT, "|sort >/tmp/Tmp$$") # $$ is our process id
2797 or die "Can't start sort: $!";
2799 # process argument list of files along with any includes
2801 foreach $file (@ARGV) {
2802 process($file, 'fh00');
2806 my($filename, $input) = @_;
2807 $input++; # this is a string increment
2808 unless (open($input, $filename)) {
2809 print STDERR "Can't open $filename: $!\n";
2814 while (<$input>) { # note use of indirection
2815 if (/^#include "(.*)"/) {
2816 process($1, $input);
2823 You may also, in the Bourne shell tradition, specify an EXPR beginning
2824 with C<< '>&' >>, in which case the rest of the string is interpreted as the
2825 name of a filehandle (or file descriptor, if numeric) to be
2826 duped and opened. You may use C<&> after C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>,
2827 C<< < >>, C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, and C<< +< >>. The
2828 mode you specify should match the mode of the original filehandle.
2829 (Duping a filehandle does not take into account any existing contents of
2830 IO buffers.) If you use the 3 arg form then you can pass either a number,
2831 the name of a filehandle or the normal "reference to a glob".
2833 Here is a script that saves, redirects, and restores STDOUT and
2837 open(my $oldout, ">&", \*STDOUT);
2838 open(OLDERR, ">&STDERR");
2840 open(STDOUT, '>', "foo.out") || die "Can't redirect stdout";
2841 open(STDERR, ">&STDOUT") || die "Can't dup stdout";
2843 select(STDERR); $| = 1; # make unbuffered
2844 select(STDOUT); $| = 1; # make unbuffered
2846 print STDOUT "stdout 1\n"; # this works for
2847 print STDERR "stderr 1\n"; # subprocesses too
2852 open(STDOUT, ">&OLDOUT");
2853 open(STDERR, ">&OLDERR");
2855 print STDOUT "stdout 2\n";
2856 print STDERR "stderr 2\n";
2858 If you specify C<< '<&=N' >>, where C<N> is a number, then Perl will
2859 do an equivalent of C's C<fdopen> of that file descriptor; this is
2860 more parsimonious of file descriptors. For example:
2862 open(FILEHANDLE, "<&=$fd")
2866 open(FILEHANDLE, "<&=", $fd)
2868 Note that if Perl is using the standard C libraries' fdopen() then on
2869 many UNIX systems, fdopen() is known to fail when file descriptors
2870 exceed a certain value, typically 255. If you need more file
2871 descriptors than that, consider rebuilding Perl to use the C<PerlIO>.
2873 You can see whether Perl has been compiled with PerlIO or not by
2874 running C<perl -V> and looking for C<useperlio=> line. If C<useperlio>
2875 is C<define>, you have PerlIO, otherwise you don't.
2877 If you open a pipe on the command C<'-'>, i.e., either C<'|-'> or C<'-|'>
2878 with 2-arguments (or 1-argument) form of open(), then
2879 there is an implicit fork done, and the return value of open is the pid
2880 of the child within the parent process, and C<0> within the child
2881 process. (Use C<defined($pid)> to determine whether the open was successful.)
2882 The filehandle behaves normally for the parent, but i/o to that
2883 filehandle is piped from/to the STDOUT/STDIN of the child process.
2884 In the child process the filehandle isn't opened--i/o happens from/to
2885 the new STDOUT or STDIN. Typically this is used like the normal
2886 piped open when you want to exercise more control over just how the
2887 pipe command gets executed, such as when you are running setuid, and
2888 don't want to have to scan shell commands for metacharacters.
2889 The following triples are more or less equivalent:
2891 open(FOO, "|tr '[a-z]' '[A-Z]'");
2892 open(FOO, '|-', "tr '[a-z]' '[A-Z]'");
2893 open(FOO, '|-') || exec 'tr', '[a-z]', '[A-Z]';
2894 open(FOO, '|-', "tr", '[a-z]', '[A-Z]');
2896 open(FOO, "cat -n '$file'|");
2897 open(FOO, '-|', "cat -n '$file'");
2898 open(FOO, '-|') || exec 'cat', '-n', $file;
2899 open(FOO, '-|', "cat", '-n', $file);
2901 The last example in each block shows the pipe as "list form", which is
2902 not yet supported on all platforms.
2904 See L<perlipc/"Safe Pipe Opens"> for more examples of this.
2906 Beginning with v5.6.0, Perl will attempt to flush all files opened for
2907 output before any operation that may do a fork, but this may not be
2908 supported on some platforms (see L<perlport>). To be safe, you may need
2909 to set C<$|> ($AUTOFLUSH in English) or call the C<autoflush()> method
2910 of C<IO::Handle> on any open handles.
2912 On systems that support a close-on-exec flag on files, the flag will
2913 be set for the newly opened file descriptor as determined by the value
2914 of $^F. See L<perlvar/$^F>.
2916 Closing any piped filehandle causes the parent process to wait for the
2917 child to finish, and returns the status value in C<$?>.
2919 The filename passed to 2-argument (or 1-argument) form of open() will
2920 have leading and trailing whitespace deleted, and the normal
2921 redirection characters honored. This property, known as "magic open",
2922 can often be used to good effect. A user could specify a filename of
2923 F<"rsh cat file |">, or you could change certain filenames as needed:
2925 $filename =~ s/(.*\.gz)\s*$/gzip -dc < $1|/;
2926 open(FH, $filename) or die "Can't open $filename: $!";
2928 Use 3-argument form to open a file with arbitrary weird characters in it,
2930 open(FOO, '<', $file);
2932 otherwise it's necessary to protect any leading and trailing whitespace:
2934 $file =~ s#^(\s)#./$1#;
2935 open(FOO, "< $file\0");
2937 (this may not work on some bizarre filesystems). One should
2938 conscientiously choose between the I<magic> and 3-arguments form
2943 will allow the user to specify an argument of the form C<"rsh cat file |">,
2944 but will not work on a filename which happens to have a trailing space, while
2946 open IN, '<', $ARGV[0];
2948 will have exactly the opposite restrictions.
2950 If you want a "real" C C<open> (see L<open(2)> on your system), then you
2951 should use the C<sysopen> function, which involves no such magic (but
2952 may use subtly different filemodes than Perl open(), which is mapped
2953 to C fopen()). This is
2954 another way to protect your filenames from interpretation. For example:
2957 sysopen(HANDLE, $path, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_EXCL)
2958 or die "sysopen $path: $!";
2959 $oldfh = select(HANDLE); $| = 1; select($oldfh);
2960 print HANDLE "stuff $$\n";
2962 print "File contains: ", <HANDLE>;
2964 Using the constructor from the C<IO::Handle> package (or one of its
2965 subclasses, such as C<IO::File> or C<IO::Socket>), you can generate anonymous
2966 filehandles that have the scope of whatever variables hold references to
2967 them, and automatically close whenever and however you leave that scope:
2971 sub read_myfile_munged {
2973 my $handle = new IO::File;
2974 open($handle, "myfile") or die "myfile: $!";
2976 or return (); # Automatically closed here.
2977 mung $first or die "mung failed"; # Or here.
2978 return $first, <$handle> if $ALL; # Or here.
2982 See L</seek> for some details about mixing reading and writing.
2984 =item opendir DIRHANDLE,EXPR
2986 Opens a directory named EXPR for processing by C<readdir>, C<telldir>,
2987 C<seekdir>, C<rewinddir>, and C<closedir>. Returns true if successful.
2988 DIRHANDLEs have their own namespace separate from FILEHANDLEs.
2994 Returns the numeric (the native 8-bit encoding, like ASCII or EBCDIC,
2995 or Unicode) value of the first character of EXPR. If EXPR is omitted,
2998 For the reverse, see L</chr>.
2999 See L<perlunicode> and L<encoding> for more about Unicode.
3003 =item our EXPR : ATTRIBUTES
3005 An C<our> declares the listed variables to be valid globals within
3006 the enclosing block, file, or C<eval>. That is, it has the same
3007 scoping rules as a "my" declaration, but does not create a local
3008 variable. If more than one value is listed, the list must be placed
3009 in parentheses. The C<our> declaration has no semantic effect unless
3010 "use strict vars" is in effect, in which case it lets you use the
3011 declared global variable without qualifying it with a package name.
3012 (But only within the lexical scope of the C<our> declaration. In this
3013 it differs from "use vars", which is package scoped.)
3015 An C<our> declaration declares a global variable that will be visible
3016 across its entire lexical scope, even across package boundaries. The
3017 package in which the variable is entered is determined at the point
3018 of the declaration, not at the point of use. This means the following
3022 our $bar; # declares $Foo::bar for rest of lexical scope
3026 print $bar; # prints 20
3028 Multiple C<our> declarations in the same lexical scope are allowed
3029 if they are in different packages. If they happened to be in the same
3030 package, Perl will emit warnings if you have asked for them.
3034 our $bar; # declares $Foo::bar for rest of lexical scope
3038 our $bar = 30; # declares $Bar::bar for rest of lexical scope
3039 print $bar; # prints 30
3041 our $bar; # emits warning
3043 An C<our> declaration may also have a list of attributes associated
3044 with it. B<WARNING>: This is an experimental feature that may be
3045 changed or removed in future releases of Perl. It should not be
3048 The only currently recognized attribute is C<unique> which indicates
3049 that a single copy of the global is to be used by all interpreters
3050 should the program happen to be running in a multi-interpreter
3051 environment. (The default behaviour would be for each interpreter to
3052 have its own copy of the global.) In such an environment, this
3053 attribute also has the effect of making the global readonly.
3056 our @EXPORT : unique = qw(foo);
3057 our %EXPORT_TAGS : unique = (bar => [qw(aa bb cc)]);
3058 our $VERSION : unique = "1.00";
3060 Multi-interpreter environments can come to being either through the
3061 fork() emulation on Windows platforms, or by embedding perl in a
3062 multi-threaded application. The C<unique> attribute does nothing in
3063 all other environments.
3065 =item pack TEMPLATE,LIST
3067 Takes a LIST of values and converts it into a string using the rules
3068 given by the TEMPLATE. The resulting string is the concatenation of
3069 the converted values. Typically, each converted value looks
3070 like its machine-level representation. For example, on 32-bit machines
3071 a converted integer may be represented by a sequence of 4 bytes.
3074 sequence of characters that give the order and type of values, as
3077 a A string with arbitrary binary data, will be null padded.
3078 A A text (ASCII) string, will be space padded.
3079 Z A null terminated (ASCIZ) string, will be null padded.
3081 b A bit string (ascending bit order inside each byte, like vec()).
3082 B A bit string (descending bit order inside each byte).
3083 h A hex string (low nybble first).
3084 H A hex string (high nybble first).
3086 c A signed char value.
3087 C An unsigned char value. Only does bytes. See U for Unicode.
3089 s A signed short value.
3090 S An unsigned short value.
3091 (This 'short' is _exactly_ 16 bits, which may differ from
3092 what a local C compiler calls 'short'. If you want
3093 native-length shorts, use the '!' suffix.)
3095 i A signed integer value.
3096 I An unsigned integer value.
3097 (This 'integer' is _at_least_ 32 bits wide. Its exact
3098 size depends on what a local C compiler calls 'int',
3099 and may even be larger than the 'long' described in
3102 l A signed long value.
3103 L An unsigned long value.
3104 (This 'long' is _exactly_ 32 bits, which may differ from
3105 what a local C compiler calls 'long'. If you want
3106 native-length longs, use the '!' suffix.)
3108 n An unsigned short in "network" (big-endian) order.
3109 N An unsigned long in "network" (big-endian) order.
3110 v An unsigned short in "VAX" (little-endian) order.
3111 V An unsigned long in "VAX" (little-endian) order.
3112 (These 'shorts' and 'longs' are _exactly_ 16 bits and
3113 _exactly_ 32 bits, respectively.)
3115 q A signed quad (64-bit) value.
3116 Q An unsigned quad value.
3117 (Quads are available only if your system supports 64-bit
3118 integer values _and_ if Perl has been compiled to support those.
3119 Causes a fatal error otherwise.)
3121 f A single-precision float in the native format.
3122 d A double-precision float in the native format.
3124 p A pointer to a null-terminated string.
3125 P A pointer to a structure (fixed-length string).
3127 u A uuencoded string.
3128 U A Unicode character number. Encodes to UTF-8 internally
3129 (or UTF-EBCDIC in EBCDIC platforms).
3131 w A BER compressed integer. Its bytes represent an unsigned
3132 integer in base 128, most significant digit first, with as
3133 few digits as possible. Bit eight (the high bit) is set
3134 on each byte except the last.
3138 @ Null fill to absolute position.
3140 The following rules apply:
3146 Each letter may optionally be followed by a number giving a repeat
3147 count. With all types except C<a>, C<A>, C<Z>, C<b>, C<B>, C<h>,
3148 C<H>, and C<P> the pack function will gobble up that many values from
3149 the LIST. A C<*> for the repeat count means to use however many items are
3150 left, except for C<@>, C<x>, C<X>, where it is equivalent
3151 to C<0>, and C<u>, where it is equivalent to 1 (or 45, what is the
3154 When used with C<Z>, C<*> results in the addition of a trailing null
3155 byte (so the packed result will be one longer than the byte C<length>
3158 The repeat count for C<u> is interpreted as the maximal number of bytes
3159 to encode per line of output, with 0 and 1 replaced by 45.
3163 The C<a>, C<A>, and C<Z> types gobble just one value, but pack it as a
3164 string of length count, padding with nulls or spaces as necessary. When
3165 unpacking, C<A> strips trailing spaces and nulls, C<Z> strips everything
3166 after the first null, and C<a> returns data verbatim. When packing,
3167 C<a>, and C<Z> are equivalent.
3169 If the value-to-pack is too long, it is truncated. If too long and an
3170 explicit count is provided, C<Z> packs only C<$count-1> bytes, followed
3171 by a null byte. Thus C<Z> always packs a trailing null byte under
3176 Likewise, the C<b> and C<B> fields pack a string that many bits long.
3177 Each byte of the input field of pack() generates 1 bit of the result.
3178 Each result bit is based on the least-significant bit of the corresponding
3179 input byte, i.e., on C<ord($byte)%2>. In particular, bytes C<"0"> and
3180 C<"1"> generate bits 0 and 1, as do bytes C<"\0"> and C<"\1">.
3182 Starting from the beginning of the input string of pack(), each 8-tuple
3183 of bytes is converted to 1 byte of output. With format C<b>
3184 the first byte of the 8-tuple determines the least-significant bit of a
3185 byte, and with format C<B> it determines the most-significant bit of
3188 If the length of the input string is not exactly divisible by 8, the
3189 remainder is packed as if the input string were padded by null bytes
3190 at the end. Similarly, during unpack()ing the "extra" bits are ignored.
3192 If the input string of pack() is longer than needed, extra bytes are ignored.
3193 A C<*> for the repeat count of pack() means to use all the bytes of
3194 the input field. On unpack()ing the bits are converted to a string
3195 of C<"0">s and C<"1">s.
3199 The C<h> and C<H> fields pack a string that many nybbles (4-bit groups,
3200 representable as hexadecimal digits, 0-9a-f) long.
3202 Each byte of the input field of pack() generates 4 bits of the result.
3203 For non-alphabetical bytes the result is based on the 4 least-significant
3204 bits of the input byte, i.e., on C<ord($byte)%16>. In particular,
3205 bytes C<"0"> and C<"1"> generate nybbles 0 and 1, as do bytes
3206 C<"\0"> and C<"\1">. For bytes C<"a".."f"> and C<"A".."F"> the result
3207 is compatible with the usual hexadecimal digits, so that C<"a"> and
3208 C<"A"> both generate the nybble C<0xa==10>. The result for bytes
3209 C<"g".."z"> and C<"G".."Z"> is not well-defined.
3211 Starting from the beginning of the input string of pack(), each pair
3212 of bytes is converted to 1 byte of output. With format C<h> the
3213 first byte of the pair determines the least-significant nybble of the
3214 output byte, and with format C<H> it determines the most-significant
3217 If the length of the input string is not even, it behaves as if padded
3218 by a null byte at the end. Similarly, during unpack()ing the "extra"
3219 nybbles are ignored.
3221 If the input string of pack() is longer than needed, extra bytes are ignored.
3222 A C<*> for the repeat count of pack() means to use all the bytes of
3223 the input field. On unpack()ing the bits are converted to a string
3224 of hexadecimal digits.
3228 The C<p> type packs a pointer to a null-terminated string. You are
3229 responsible for ensuring the string is not a temporary value (which can
3230 potentially get deallocated before you get around to using the packed result).
3231 The C<P> type packs a pointer to a structure of the size indicated by the
3232 length. A NULL pointer is created if the corresponding value for C<p> or
3233 C<P> is C<undef>, similarly for unpack().
3237 The C</> template character allows packing and unpacking of strings where
3238 the packed structure contains a byte count followed by the string itself.
3239 You write I<length-item>C</>I<string-item>.
3241 The I<length-item> can be any C<pack> template letter,
3242 and describes how the length value is packed.
3243 The ones likely to be of most use are integer-packing ones like
3244 C<n> (for Java strings), C<w> (for ASN.1 or SNMP)
3245 and C<N> (for Sun XDR).
3247 The I<string-item> must, at present, be C<"A*">, C<"a*"> or C<"Z*">.
3248 For C<unpack> the length of the string is obtained from the I<length-item>,
3249 but if you put in the '*' it will be ignored.
3251 unpack 'C/a', "\04Gurusamy"; gives 'Guru'
3252 unpack 'a3/A* A*', '007 Bond J '; gives (' Bond','J')
3253 pack 'n/a* w/a*','hello,','world'; gives "\000\006hello,\005world"
3255 The I<length-item> is not returned explicitly from C<unpack>.
3257 Adding a count to the I<length-item> letter is unlikely to do anything
3258 useful, unless that letter is C<A>, C<a> or C<Z>. Packing with a
3259 I<length-item> of C<a> or C<Z> may introduce C<"\000"> characters,
3260 which Perl does not regard as legal in numeric strings.
3264 The integer types C<s>, C<S>, C<l>, and C<L> may be
3265 immediately followed by a C<!> suffix to signify native shorts or
3266 longs--as you can see from above for example a bare C<l> does mean
3267 exactly 32 bits, the native C<long> (as seen by the local C compiler)
3268 may be larger. This is an issue mainly in 64-bit platforms. You can
3269 see whether using C<!> makes any difference by
3271 print length(pack("s")), " ", length(pack("s!")), "\n";
3272 print length(pack("l")), " ", length(pack("l!")), "\n";
3274 C<i!> and C<I!> also work but only because of completeness;
3275 they are identical to C<i> and C<I>.
3277 The actual sizes (in bytes) of native shorts, ints, longs, and long
3278 longs on the platform where Perl was built are also available via
3282 print $Config{shortsize}, "\n";
3283 print $Config{intsize}, "\n";
3284 print $Config{longsize}, "\n";
3285 print $Config{longlongsize}, "\n";
3287 (The C<$Config{longlongsize}> will be undefine if your system does
3288 not support long longs.)
3292 The integer formats C<s>, C<S>, C<i>, C<I>, C<l>, and C<L>
3293 are inherently non-portable between processors and operating systems
3294 because they obey the native byteorder and endianness. For example a
3295 4-byte integer 0x12345678 (305419896 decimal) would be ordered natively
3296 (arranged in and handled by the CPU registers) into bytes as
3298 0x12 0x34 0x56 0x78 # big-endian
3299 0x78 0x56 0x34 0x12 # little-endian
3301 Basically, the Intel and VAX CPUs are little-endian, while everybody
3302 else, for example Motorola m68k/88k, PPC, Sparc, HP PA, Power, and
3303 Cray are big-endian. Alpha and MIPS can be either: Digital/Compaq
3304 used/uses them in little-endian mode; SGI/Cray uses them in big-endian
3307 The names `big-endian' and `little-endian' are comic references to
3308 the classic "Gulliver's Travels" (via the paper "On Holy Wars and a
3309 Plea for Peace" by Danny Cohen, USC/ISI IEN 137, April 1, 1980) and
3310 the egg-eating habits of the Lilliputians.
3312 Some systems may have even weirder byte orders such as
3317 You can see your system's preference with
3319 print join(" ", map { sprintf "%#02x", $_ }
3320 unpack("C*",pack("L",0x12345678))), "\n";
3322 The byteorder on the platform where Perl was built is also available
3326 print $Config{byteorder}, "\n";
3328 Byteorders C<'1234'> and C<'12345678'> are little-endian, C<'4321'>
3329 and C<'87654321'> are big-endian.
3331 If you want portable packed integers use the formats C<n>, C<N>,
3332 C<v>, and C<V>, their byte endianness and size are known.
3333 See also L<perlport>.
3337 Real numbers (floats and doubles) are in the native machine format only;
3338 due to the multiplicity of floating formats around, and the lack of a
3339 standard "network" representation, no facility for interchange has been
3340 made. This means that packed floating point data written on one machine
3341 may not be readable on another - even if both use IEEE floating point
3342 arithmetic (as the endian-ness of the memory representation is not part
3343 of the IEEE spec). See also L<perlport>.
3345 Note that Perl uses doubles internally for all numeric calculation, and
3346 converting from double into float and thence back to double again will
3347 lose precision (i.e., C<unpack("f", pack("f", $foo)>) will not in general
3352 If the pattern begins with a C<U>, the resulting string will be treated
3353 as Unicode-encoded. You can force UTF8 encoding on in a string with an
3354 initial C<U0>, and the bytes that follow will be interpreted as Unicode
3355 characters. If you don't want this to happen, you can begin your pattern
3356 with C<C0> (or anything else) to force Perl not to UTF8 encode your
3357 string, and then follow this with a C<U*> somewhere in your pattern.
3361 You must yourself do any alignment or padding by inserting for example
3362 enough C<'x'>es while packing. There is no way to pack() and unpack()
3363 could know where the bytes are going to or coming from. Therefore
3364 C<pack> (and C<unpack>) handle their output and input as flat
3369 A comment in a TEMPLATE starts with C<#> and goes to the end of line.
3373 If TEMPLATE requires more arguments to pack() than actually given, pack()
3374 assumes additional C<""> arguments. If TEMPLATE requires less arguments
3375 to pack() than actually given, extra arguments are ignored.
3381 $foo = pack("CCCC",65,66,67,68);
3383 $foo = pack("C4",65,66,67,68);
3385 $foo = pack("U4",0x24b6,0x24b7,0x24b8,0x24b9);
3386 # same thing with Unicode circled letters
3388 $foo = pack("ccxxcc",65,66,67,68);
3391 # note: the above examples featuring "C" and "c" are true
3392 # only on ASCII and ASCII-derived systems such as ISO Latin 1
3393 # and UTF-8. In EBCDIC the first example would be
3394 # $foo = pack("CCCC",193,194,195,196);
3396 $foo = pack("s2",1,2);
3397 # "\1\0\2\0" on little-endian
3398 # "\0\1\0\2" on big-endian
3400 $foo = pack("a4","abcd","x","y","z");
3403 $foo = pack("aaaa","abcd","x","y","z");
3406 $foo = pack("a14","abcdefg");
3407 # "abcdefg\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"
3409 $foo = pack("i9pl", gmtime);
3410 # a real struct tm (on my system anyway)
3412 $utmp_template = "Z8 Z8 Z16 L";
3413 $utmp = pack($utmp_template, @utmp1);
3414 # a struct utmp (BSDish)
3416 @utmp2 = unpack($utmp_template, $utmp);
3417 # "@utmp1" eq "@utmp2"
3420 unpack("N", pack("B32", substr("0" x 32 . shift, -32)));
3423 $foo = pack('sx2l', 12, 34);
3424 # short 12, two zero bytes padding, long 34
3425 $bar = pack('s@4l', 12, 34);
3426 # short 12, zero fill to position 4, long 34
3429 The same template may generally also be used in unpack().
3431 =item package NAMESPACE
3435 Declares the compilation unit as being in the given namespace. The scope
3436 of the package declaration is from the declaration itself through the end
3437 of the enclosing block, file, or eval (the same as the C<my> operator).
3438 All further unqualified dynamic identifiers will be in this namespace.
3439 A package statement affects only dynamic variables--including those
3440 you've used C<local> on--but I<not> lexical variables, which are created
3441 with C<my>. Typically it would be the first declaration in a file to
3442 be included by the C<require> or C<use> operator. You can switch into a
3443 package in more than one place; it merely influences which symbol table
3444 is used by the compiler for the rest of that block. You can refer to
3445 variables and filehandles in other packages by prefixing the identifier
3446 with the package name and a double colon: C<$Package::Variable>.
3447 If the package name is null, the C<main> package as assumed. That is,
3448 C<$::sail> is equivalent to C<$main::sail> (as well as to C<$main'sail>,
3449 still seen in older code).
3451 If NAMESPACE is omitted, then there is no current package, and all
3452 identifiers must be fully qualified or lexicals. However, you are
3453 strongly advised not to make use of this feature. Its use can cause
3454 unexpected behaviour, even crashing some versions of Perl. It is
3455 deprecated, and will be removed from a future release.
3457 See L<perlmod/"Packages"> for more information about packages, modules,
3458 and classes. See L<perlsub> for other scoping issues.
3460 =item pipe READHANDLE,WRITEHANDLE
3462 Opens a pair of connected pipes like the corresponding system call.
3463 Note that if you set up a loop of piped processes, deadlock can occur
3464 unless you are very careful. In addition, note that Perl's pipes use
3465 IO buffering, so you may need to set C<$|> to flush your WRITEHANDLE
3466 after each command, depending on the application.
3468 See L<IPC::Open2>, L<IPC::Open3>, and L<perlipc/"Bidirectional Communication">
3469 for examples of such things.
3471 On systems that support a close-on-exec flag on files, the flag will be set
3472 for the newly opened file descriptors as determined by the value of $^F.
3479 Pops and returns the last value of the array, shortening the array by
3480 one element. Has an effect similar to
3484 If there are no elements in the array, returns the undefined value
3485 (although this may happen at other times as well). If ARRAY is
3486 omitted, pops the C<@ARGV> array in the main program, and the C<@_>
3487 array in subroutines, just like C<shift>.
3493 Returns the offset of where the last C<m//g> search left off for the variable
3494 in question (C<$_> is used when the variable is not specified). May be
3495 modified to change that offset. Such modification will also influence
3496 the C<\G> zero-width assertion in regular expressions. See L<perlre> and
3499 =item print FILEHANDLE LIST
3505 Prints a string or a list of strings. Returns true if successful.
3506 FILEHANDLE may be a scalar variable name, in which case the variable
3507 contains the name of or a reference to the filehandle, thus introducing
3508 one level of indirection. (NOTE: If FILEHANDLE is a variable and
3509 the next token is a term, it may be misinterpreted as an operator
3510 unless you interpose a C<+> or put parentheses around the arguments.)
3511 If FILEHANDLE is omitted, prints by default to standard output (or
3512 to the last selected output channel--see L</select>). If LIST is
3513 also omitted, prints C<$_> to the currently selected output channel.
3514 To set the default output channel to something other than STDOUT
3515 use the select operation. The current value of C<$,> (if any) is
3516 printed between each LIST item. The current value of C<$\> (if
3517 any) is printed after the entire LIST has been printed. Because
3518 print takes a LIST, anything in the LIST is evaluated in list
3519 context, and any subroutine that you call will have one or more of
3520 its expressions evaluated in list context. Also be careful not to
3521 follow the print keyword with a left parenthesis unless you want
3522 the corresponding right parenthesis to terminate the arguments to
3523 the print--interpose a C<+> or put parentheses around all the
3526 Note that if you're storing FILEHANDLES in an array or other expression,
3527 you will have to use a block returning its value instead:
3529 print { $files[$i] } "stuff\n";
3530 print { $OK ? STDOUT : STDERR } "stuff\n";
3532 =item printf FILEHANDLE FORMAT, LIST
3534 =item printf FORMAT, LIST
3536 Equivalent to C<print FILEHANDLE sprintf(FORMAT, LIST)>, except that C<$\>
3537 (the output record separator) is not appended. The first argument
3538 of the list will be interpreted as the C<printf> format. See C<sprintf>
3539 for an explanation of the format argument. If C<use locale> is in effect,
3540 the character used for the decimal point in formatted real numbers is
3541 affected by the LC_NUMERIC locale. See L<perllocale>.
3543 Don't fall into the trap of using a C<printf> when a simple
3544 C<print> would do. The C<print> is more efficient and less
3547 =item prototype FUNCTION
3549 Returns the prototype of a function as a string (or C<undef> if the
3550 function has no prototype). FUNCTION is a reference to, or the name of,
3551 the function whose prototype you want to retrieve.
3553 If FUNCTION is a string starting with C<CORE::>, the rest is taken as a
3554 name for Perl builtin. If the builtin is not I<overridable> (such as
3555 C<qw//>) or its arguments cannot be expressed by a prototype (such as
3556 C<system>) returns C<undef> because the builtin does not really behave
3557 like a Perl function. Otherwise, the string describing the equivalent
3558 prototype is returned.
3560 =item push ARRAY,LIST
3562 Treats ARRAY as a stack, and pushes the values of LIST
3563 onto the end of ARRAY. The length of ARRAY increases by the length of
3564 LIST. Has the same effect as
3567 $ARRAY[++$#ARRAY] = $value;
3570 but is more efficient. Returns the new number of elements in the array.
3582 Generalized quotes. See L<perlop/"Regexp Quote-Like Operators">.
3584 =item quotemeta EXPR
3588 Returns the value of EXPR with all non-"word"
3589 characters backslashed. (That is, all characters not matching
3590 C</[A-Za-z_0-9]/> will be preceded by a backslash in the
3591 returned string, regardless of any locale settings.)
3592 This is the internal function implementing
3593 the C<\Q> escape in double-quoted strings.
3595 If EXPR is omitted, uses C<$_>.
3601 Returns a random fractional number greater than or equal to C<0> and less
3602 than the value of EXPR. (EXPR should be positive.) If EXPR is
3603 omitted, or a C<0>, the value C<1> is used. Automatically calls C<srand>
3604 unless C<srand> has already been called. See also C<srand>.
3606 Apply C<int()> to the value returned by C<rand()> if you want random
3607 integers instead of random fractional numbers. For example,
3611 returns a random integer between C<0> and C<9>, inclusive.
3613 (Note: If your rand function consistently returns numbers that are too
3614 large or too small, then your version of Perl was probably compiled
3615 with the wrong number of RANDBITS.)
3617 =item read FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH,OFFSET
3619 =item read FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH
3621 Attempts to read LENGTH I<characters> of data into variable SCALAR
3622 from the specified FILEHANDLE. Returns the number of characters
3623 actually read, C<0> at end of file, or undef if there was an error.
3624 SCALAR will be grown or shrunk to the length actually read. If SCALAR
3625 needs growing, the new bytes will be zero bytes. An OFFSET may be
3626 specified to place the read data into some other place in SCALAR than
3627 the beginning. The call is actually implemented in terms of either
3628 Perl's or system's fread() call. To get a true read(2) system call,
3631 Note the I<characters>: depending on the status of the filehandle,
3632 either (8-bit) bytes or characters are read. By default all
3633 filehandles operate on bytes, but for example if the filehandle has
3634 been opened with the C<:utf8> discipline (see L</open>, and the C<open>
3635 pragma, L<open>), the I/O will operate on characters, not bytes.
3637 =item readdir DIRHANDLE
3639 Returns the next directory entry for a directory opened by C<opendir>.
3640 If used in list context, returns all the rest of the entries in the
3641 directory. If there are no more entries, returns an undefined value in
3642 scalar context or a null list in list context.
3644 If you're planning to filetest the return values out of a C<readdir>, you'd
3645 better prepend the directory in question. Otherwise, because we didn't
3646 C<chdir> there, it would have been testing the wrong file.
3648 opendir(DIR, $some_dir) || die "can't opendir $some_dir: $!";
3649 @dots = grep { /^\./ && -f "$some_dir/$_" } readdir(DIR);
3654 Reads from the filehandle whose typeglob is contained in EXPR. In scalar
3655 context, each call reads and returns the next line, until end-of-file is
3656 reached, whereupon the subsequent call returns undef. In list context,
3657 reads until end-of-file is reached and returns a list of lines. Note that
3658 the notion of "line" used here is however you may have defined it
3659 with C<$/> or C<$INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR>). See L<perlvar/"$/">.
3661 When C<$/> is set to C<undef>, when readline() is in scalar
3662 context (i.e. file slurp mode), and when an empty file is read, it
3663 returns C<''> the first time, followed by C<undef> subsequently.
3665 This is the internal function implementing the C<< <EXPR> >>
3666 operator, but you can use it directly. The C<< <EXPR> >>
3667 operator is discussed in more detail in L<perlop/"I/O Operators">.
3670 $line = readline(*STDIN); # same thing
3676 Returns the value of a symbolic link, if symbolic links are
3677 implemented. If not, gives a fatal error. If there is some system
3678 error, returns the undefined value and sets C<$!> (errno). If EXPR is
3679 omitted, uses C<$_>.
3683 EXPR is executed as a system command.
3684 The collected standard output of the command is returned.
3685 In scalar context, it comes back as a single (potentially
3686 multi-line) string. In list context, returns a list of lines
3687 (however you've defined lines with C<$/> or C<$INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR>).
3688 This is the internal function implementing the C<qx/EXPR/>
3689 operator, but you can use it directly. The C<qx/EXPR/>
3690 operator is discussed in more detail in L<perlop/"I/O Operators">.
3692 =item recv SOCKET,SCALAR,LENGTH,FLAGS
3694 Receives a message on a socket. Attempts to receive LENGTH characters
3695 of data into variable SCALAR from the specified SOCKET filehandle.
3696 SCALAR will be grown or shrunk to the length actually read. Takes the
3697 same flags as the system call of the same name. Returns the address
3698 of the sender if SOCKET's protocol supports this; returns an empty
3699 string otherwise. If there's an error, returns the undefined value.
3700 This call is actually implemented in terms of recvfrom(2) system call.
3701 See L<perlipc/"UDP: Message Passing"> for examples.
3703 Note the I<characters>: depending on the status of the socket, either
3704 (8-bit) bytes or characters are received. By default all sockets
3705 operate on bytes, but for example if the socket has been changed using
3706 binmode() to operate with the C<:utf8> discipline (see the C<open>
3707 pragma, L<open>), the I/O will operate on characters, not bytes.
3713 The C<redo> command restarts the loop block without evaluating the
3714 conditional again. The C<continue> block, if any, is not executed. If
3715 the LABEL is omitted, the command refers to the innermost enclosing
3716 loop. This command is normally used by programs that want to lie to
3717 themselves about what was just input:
3719 # a simpleminded Pascal comment stripper
3720 # (warning: assumes no { or } in strings)
3721 LINE: while (<STDIN>) {
3722 while (s|({.*}.*){.*}|$1 |) {}
3727 if (/}/) { # end of comment?
3736 C<redo> cannot be used to retry a block which returns a value such as
3737 C<eval {}>, C<sub {}> or C<do {}>, and should not be used to exit
3738 a grep() or map() operation.
3740 Note that a block by itself is semantically identical to a loop
3741 that executes once. Thus C<redo> inside such a block will effectively
3742 turn it into a looping construct.
3744 See also L</continue> for an illustration of how C<last>, C<next>, and
3751 Returns a true value if EXPR is a reference, false otherwise. If EXPR
3752 is not specified, C<$_> will be used. The value returned depends on the
3753 type of thing the reference is a reference to.
3754 Builtin types include:
3764 If the referenced object has been blessed into a package, then that package
3765 name is returned instead. You can think of C<ref> as a C<typeof> operator.
3767 if (ref($r) eq "HASH") {
3768 print "r is a reference to a hash.\n";
3771 print "r is not a reference at all.\n";
3773 if (UNIVERSAL::isa($r, "HASH")) { # for subclassing
3774 print "r is a reference to something that isa hash.\n";
3777 See also L<perlref>.
3779 =item rename OLDNAME,NEWNAME
3781 Changes the name of a file; an existing file NEWNAME will be
3782 clobbered. Returns true for success, false otherwise.
3784 Behavior of this function varies wildly depending on your system
3785 implementation. For example, it will usually not work across file system
3786 boundaries, even though the system I<mv> command sometimes compensates
3787 for this. Other restrictions include whether it works on directories,
3788 open files, or pre-existing files. Check L<perlport> and either the
3789 rename(2) manpage or equivalent system documentation for details.
3791 =item require VERSION
3797 Demands a version of Perl specified by VERSION, or demands some semantics
3798 specified by EXPR or by C<$_> if EXPR is not supplied.
3800 VERSION may be either a numeric argument such as 5.006, which will be
3801 compared to C<$]>, or a literal of the form v5.6.1, which will be compared
3802 to C<$^V> (aka $PERL_VERSION). A fatal error is produced at run time if
3803 VERSION is greater than the version of the current Perl interpreter.
3804 Compare with L</use>, which can do a similar check at compile time.
3806 Specifying VERSION as a literal of the form v5.6.1 should generally be
3807 avoided, because it leads to misleading error messages under earlier
3808 versions of Perl which do not support this syntax. The equivalent numeric
3809 version should be used instead.
3811 require v5.6.1; # run time version check
3812 require 5.6.1; # ditto
3813 require 5.006_001; # ditto; preferred for backwards compatibility
3815 Otherwise, demands that a library file be included if it hasn't already
3816 been included. The file is included via the do-FILE mechanism, which is
3817 essentially just a variety of C<eval>. Has semantics similar to the following
3822 return 1 if $INC{$filename};
3823 my($realfilename,$result);
3825 foreach $prefix (@INC) {
3826 $realfilename = "$prefix/$filename";
3827 if (-f $realfilename) {
3828 $INC{$filename} = $realfilename;
3829 $result = do $realfilename;
3833 die "Can't find $filename in \@INC";
3835 delete $INC{$filename} if $@ || !$result;
3837 die "$filename did not return true value" unless $result;
3841 Note that the file will not be included twice under the same specified
3842 name. The file must return true as the last statement to indicate
3843 successful execution of any initialization code, so it's customary to
3844 end such a file with C<1;> unless you're sure it'll return true
3845 otherwise. But it's better just to put the C<1;>, in case you add more
3848 If EXPR is a bareword, the require assumes a "F<.pm>" extension and
3849 replaces "F<::>" with "F</>" in the filename for you,
3850 to make it easy to load standard modules. This form of loading of
3851 modules does not risk altering your namespace.
3853 In other words, if you try this:
3855 require Foo::Bar; # a splendid bareword
3857 The require function will actually look for the "F<Foo/Bar.pm>" file in the
3858 directories specified in the C<@INC> array.
3860 But if you try this:
3862 $class = 'Foo::Bar';
3863 require $class; # $class is not a bareword
3865 require "Foo::Bar"; # not a bareword because of the ""
3867 The require function will look for the "F<Foo::Bar>" file in the @INC array and
3868 will complain about not finding "F<Foo::Bar>" there. In this case you can do:
3870 eval "require $class";
3872 You can also insert hooks into the import facility, by putting directly
3873 Perl code into the @INC array. There are three forms of hooks: subroutine
3874 references, array references and blessed objects.
3876 Subroutine references are the simplest case. When the inclusion system
3877 walks through @INC and encounters a subroutine, this subroutine gets
3878 called with two parameters, the first being a reference to itself, and the
3879 second the name of the file to be included (e.g. "F<Foo/Bar.pm>"). The
3880 subroutine should return C<undef> or a filehandle, from which the file to
3881 include will be read. If C<undef> is returned, C<require> will look at
3882 the remaining elements of @INC.
3884 If the hook is an array reference, its first element must be a subroutine
3885 reference. This subroutine is called as above, but the first parameter is
3886 the array reference. This enables to pass indirectly some arguments to
3889 In other words, you can write:
3891 push @INC, \&my_sub;
3893 my ($coderef, $filename) = @_; # $coderef is \&my_sub
3899 push @INC, [ \&my_sub, $x, $y, ... ];
3901 my ($arrayref, $filename) = @_;
3902 # Retrieve $x, $y, ...
3903 my @parameters = @$arrayref[1..$#$arrayref];
3907 If the hook is an object, it must provide an INC method, that will be
3908 called as above, the first parameter being the object itself. (Note that
3909 you must fully qualify the sub's name, as it is always forced into package
3910 C<main>.) Here is a typical code layout:
3916 my ($self, $filename) = @_;
3920 # In the main program
3921 push @INC, new Foo(...);
3923 Note that these hooks are also permitted to set the %INC entry
3924 corresponding to the files they have loaded. See L<perlvar/%INC>.
3926 For a yet-more-powerful import facility, see L</use> and L<perlmod>.
3932 Generally used in a C<continue> block at the end of a loop to clear
3933 variables and reset C<??> searches so that they work again. The
3934 expression is interpreted as a list of single characters (hyphens
3935 allowed for ranges). All variables and arrays beginning with one of
3936 those letters are reset to their pristine state. If the expression is
3937 omitted, one-match searches (C<?pattern?>) are reset to match again. Resets
3938 only variables or searches in the current package. Always returns
3941 reset 'X'; # reset all X variables
3942 reset 'a-z'; # reset lower case variables
3943 reset; # just reset ?one-time? searches
3945 Resetting C<"A-Z"> is not recommended because you'll wipe out your
3946 C<@ARGV> and C<@INC> arrays and your C<%ENV> hash. Resets only package
3947 variables--lexical variables are unaffected, but they clean themselves
3948 up on scope exit anyway, so you'll probably want to use them instead.
3955 Returns from a subroutine, C<eval>, or C<do FILE> with the value
3956 given in EXPR. Evaluation of EXPR may be in list, scalar, or void
3957 context, depending on how the return value will be used, and the context
3958 may vary from one execution to the next (see C<wantarray>). If no EXPR
3959 is given, returns an empty list in list context, the undefined value in
3960 scalar context, and (of course) nothing at all in a void context.
3962 (Note that in the absence of an explicit C<return>, a subroutine, eval,
3963 or do FILE will automatically return the value of the last expression
3968 In list context, returns a list value consisting of the elements
3969 of LIST in the opposite order. In scalar context, concatenates the
3970 elements of LIST and returns a string value with all characters
3971 in the opposite order.
3973 print reverse <>; # line tac, last line first
3975 undef $/; # for efficiency of <>
3976 print scalar reverse <>; # character tac, last line tsrif
3978 This operator is also handy for inverting a hash, although there are some
3979 caveats. If a value is duplicated in the original hash, only one of those
3980 can be represented as a key in the inverted hash. Also, this has to
3981 unwind one hash and build a whole new one, which may take some time
3982 on a large hash, such as from a DBM file.
3984 %by_name = reverse %by_address; # Invert the hash
3986 =item rewinddir DIRHANDLE
3988 Sets the current position to the beginning of the directory for the
3989 C<readdir> routine on DIRHANDLE.
3991 =item rindex STR,SUBSTR,POSITION
3993 =item rindex STR,SUBSTR
3995 Works just like index() except that it returns the position of the LAST
3996 occurrence of SUBSTR in STR. If POSITION is specified, returns the
3997 last occurrence at or before that position.
3999 =item rmdir FILENAME
4003 Deletes the directory specified by FILENAME if that directory is empty. If it
4004 succeeds it returns true, otherwise it returns false and sets C<$!> (errno). If
4005 FILENAME is omitted, uses C<$_>.
4009 The substitution operator. See L<perlop>.
4013 Forces EXPR to be interpreted in scalar context and returns the value
4016 @counts = ( scalar @a, scalar @b, scalar @c );
4018 There is no equivalent operator to force an expression to
4019 be interpolated in list context because in practice, this is never
4020 needed. If you really wanted to do so, however, you could use
4021 the construction C<@{[ (some expression) ]}>, but usually a simple
4022 C<(some expression)> suffices.
4024 Because C<scalar> is unary operator, if you accidentally use for EXPR a
4025 parenthesized list, this behaves as a scalar comma expression, evaluating
4026 all but the last element in void context and returning the final element
4027 evaluated in scalar context. This is seldom what you want.
4029 The following single statement:
4031 print uc(scalar(&foo,$bar)),$baz;
4033 is the moral equivalent of these two:
4036 print(uc($bar),$baz);
4038 See L<perlop> for more details on unary operators and the comma operator.
4040 =item seek FILEHANDLE,POSITION,WHENCE
4042 Sets FILEHANDLE's position, just like the C<fseek> call of C<stdio>.
4043 FILEHANDLE may be an expression whose value gives the name of the
4044 filehandle. The values for WHENCE are C<0> to set the new position
4045 I<in bytes> to POSITION, C<1> to set it to the current position plus
4046 POSITION, and C<2> to set it to EOF plus POSITION (typically
4047 negative). For WHENCE you may use the constants C<SEEK_SET>,
4048 C<SEEK_CUR>, and C<SEEK_END> (start of the file, current position, end
4049 of the file) from the Fcntl module. Returns C<1> upon success, C<0>
4052 Note the I<in bytes>: even if the filehandle has been set to
4053 operate on characters (for example by using the C<:utf8> open
4054 discipline), tell() will return byte offsets, not character offsets
4055 (because implementing that would render seek() and tell() rather slow).
4057 If you want to position file for C<sysread> or C<syswrite>, don't use
4058 C<seek>--buffering makes its effect on the file's system position
4059 unpredictable and non-portable. Use C<sysseek> instead.
4061 Due to the rules and rigors of ANSI C, on some systems you have to do a
4062 seek whenever you switch between reading and writing. Amongst other
4063 things, this may have the effect of calling stdio's clearerr(3).
4064 A WHENCE of C<1> (C<SEEK_CUR>) is useful for not moving the file position:
4068 This is also useful for applications emulating C<tail -f>. Once you hit
4069 EOF on your read, and then sleep for a while, you might have to stick in a
4070 seek() to reset things. The C<seek> doesn't change the current position,
4071 but it I<does> clear the end-of-file condition on the handle, so that the
4072 next C<< <FILE> >> makes Perl try again to read something. We hope.
4074 If that doesn't work (some IO implementations are particularly
4075 cantankerous), then you may need something more like this:
4078 for ($curpos = tell(FILE); $_ = <FILE>;
4079 $curpos = tell(FILE)) {
4080 # search for some stuff and put it into files
4082 sleep($for_a_while);
4083 seek(FILE, $curpos, 0);
4086 =item seekdir DIRHANDLE,POS
4088 Sets the current position for the C<readdir> routine on DIRHANDLE. POS
4089 must be a value returned by C<telldir>. Has the same caveats about
4090 possible directory compaction as the corresponding system library
4093 =item select FILEHANDLE
4097 Returns the currently selected filehandle. Sets the current default
4098 filehandle for output, if FILEHANDLE is supplied. This has two
4099 effects: first, a C<write> or a C<print> without a filehandle will
4100 default to this FILEHANDLE. Second, references to variables related to
4101 output will refer to this output channel. For example, if you have to
4102 set the top of form format for more than one output channel, you might
4110 FILEHANDLE may be an expression whose value gives the name of the
4111 actual filehandle. Thus:
4113 $oldfh = select(STDERR); $| = 1; select($oldfh);
4115 Some programmers may prefer to think of filehandles as objects with
4116 methods, preferring to write the last example as:
4119 STDERR->autoflush(1);
4121 =item select RBITS,WBITS,EBITS,TIMEOUT
4123 This calls the select(2) system call with the bit masks specified, which
4124 can be constructed using C<fileno> and C<vec>, along these lines:
4126 $rin = $win = $ein = '';
4127 vec($rin,fileno(STDIN),1) = 1;
4128 vec($win,fileno(STDOUT),1) = 1;
4131 If you want to select on many filehandles you might wish to write a
4135 my(@fhlist) = split(' ',$_[0]);
4138 vec($bits,fileno($_),1) = 1;
4142 $rin = fhbits('STDIN TTY SOCK');
4146 ($nfound,$timeleft) =
4147 select($rout=$rin, $wout=$win, $eout=$ein, $timeout);
4149 or to block until something becomes ready just do this
4151 $nfound = select($rout=$rin, $wout=$win, $eout=$ein, undef);
4153 Most systems do not bother to return anything useful in $timeleft, so
4154 calling select() in scalar context just returns $nfound.
4156 Any of the bit masks can also be undef. The timeout, if specified, is
4157 in seconds, which may be fractional. Note: not all implementations are
4158 capable of returning the $timeleft. If not, they always return
4159 $timeleft equal to the supplied $timeout.
4161 You can effect a sleep of 250 milliseconds this way:
4163 select(undef, undef, undef, 0.25);
4165 B<WARNING>: One should not attempt to mix buffered I/O (like C<read>
4166 or <FH>) with C<select>, except as permitted by POSIX, and even
4167 then only on POSIX systems. You have to use C<sysread> instead.
4169 =item semctl ID,SEMNUM,CMD,ARG
4171 Calls the System V IPC function C<semctl>. You'll probably have to say
4175 first to get the correct constant definitions. If CMD is IPC_STAT or
4176 GETALL, then ARG must be a variable which will hold the returned
4177 semid_ds structure or semaphore value array. Returns like C<ioctl>:
4178 the undefined value for error, "C<0 but true>" for zero, or the actual
4179 return value otherwise. The ARG must consist of a vector of native
4180 short integers, which may be created with C<pack("s!",(0)x$nsem)>.
4181 See also L<perlipc/"SysV IPC">, C<IPC::SysV>, C<IPC::Semaphore>
4184 =item semget KEY,NSEMS,FLAGS
4186 Calls the System V IPC function semget. Returns the semaphore id, or
4187 the undefined value if there is an error. See also
4188 L<perlipc/"SysV IPC">, C<IPC::SysV>, C<IPC::SysV::Semaphore>
4191 =item semop KEY,OPSTRING
4193 Calls the System V IPC function semop to perform semaphore operations
4194 such as signalling and waiting. OPSTRING must be a packed array of
4195 semop structures. Each semop structure can be generated with
4196 C<pack("s!3", $semnum, $semop, $semflag)>. The number of semaphore
4197 operations is implied by the length of OPSTRING. Returns true if
4198 successful, or false if there is an error. As an example, the
4199 following code waits on semaphore $semnum of semaphore id $semid:
4201 $semop = pack("s!3", $semnum, -1, 0);
4202 die "Semaphore trouble: $!\n" unless semop($semid, $semop);
4204 To signal the semaphore, replace C<-1> with C<1>. See also
4205 L<perlipc/"SysV IPC">, C<IPC::SysV>, and C<IPC::SysV::Semaphore>
4208 =item send SOCKET,MSG,FLAGS,TO
4210 =item send SOCKET,MSG,FLAGS
4212 Sends a message on a socket. Attemps to send the scalar MSG to the
4213 SOCKET filehandle. Takes the same flags as the system call of the
4214 same name. On unconnected sockets you must specify a destination to
4215 send TO, in which case it does a C C<sendto>. Returns the number of
4216 characters sent, or the undefined value if there is an error. The C
4217 system call sendmsg(2) is currently unimplemented. See
4218 L<perlipc/"UDP: Message Passing"> for examples.
4220 Note the I<characters>: depending on the status of the socket, either
4221 (8-bit) bytes or characters are sent. By default all sockets operate
4222 on bytes, but for example if the socket has been changed using
4223 binmode() to operate with the C<:utf8> discipline (see L</open>, or
4224 the C<open> pragma, L<open>), the I/O will operate on characters, not
4227 =item setpgrp PID,PGRP
4229 Sets the current process group for the specified PID, C<0> for the current
4230 process. Will produce a fatal error if used on a machine that doesn't
4231 implement POSIX setpgid(2) or BSD setpgrp(2). If the arguments are omitted,
4232 it defaults to C<0,0>. Note that the BSD 4.2 version of C<setpgrp> does not
4233 accept any arguments, so only C<setpgrp(0,0)> is portable. See also
4236 =item setpriority WHICH,WHO,PRIORITY
4238 Sets the current priority for a process, a process group, or a user.
4239 (See setpriority(2).) Will produce a fatal error if used on a machine
4240 that doesn't implement setpriority(2).
4242 =item setsockopt SOCKET,LEVEL,OPTNAME,OPTVAL
4244 Sets the socket option requested. Returns undefined if there is an
4245 error. OPTVAL may be specified as C<undef> if you don't want to pass an
4252 Shifts the first value of the array off and returns it, shortening the
4253 array by 1 and moving everything down. If there are no elements in the
4254 array, returns the undefined value. If ARRAY is omitted, shifts the
4255 C<@_> array within the lexical scope of subroutines and formats, and the
4256 C<@ARGV> array at file scopes or within the lexical scopes established by
4257 the C<eval ''>, C<BEGIN {}>, C<INIT {}>, C<CHECK {}>, and C<END {}>
4260 See also C<unshift>, C<push>, and C<pop>. C<shift> and C<unshift> do the
4261 same thing to the left end of an array that C<pop> and C<push> do to the
4264 =item shmctl ID,CMD,ARG
4266 Calls the System V IPC function shmctl. You'll probably have to say
4270 first to get the correct constant definitions. If CMD is C<IPC_STAT>,
4271 then ARG must be a variable which will hold the returned C<shmid_ds>
4272 structure. Returns like ioctl: the undefined value for error, "C<0> but
4273 true" for zero, or the actual return value otherwise.
4274 See also L<perlipc/"SysV IPC"> and C<IPC::SysV> documentation.
4276 =item shmget KEY,SIZE,FLAGS
4278 Calls the System V IPC function shmget. Returns the shared memory
4279 segment id, or the undefined value if there is an error.
4280 See also L<perlipc/"SysV IPC"> and C<IPC::SysV> documentation.
4282 =item shmread ID,VAR,POS,SIZE
4284 =item shmwrite ID,STRING,POS,SIZE
4286 Reads or writes the System V shared memory segment ID starting at
4287 position POS for size SIZE by attaching to it, copying in/out, and
4288 detaching from it. When reading, VAR must be a variable that will
4289 hold the data read. When writing, if STRING is too long, only SIZE
4290 bytes are used; if STRING is too short, nulls are written to fill out
4291 SIZE bytes. Return true if successful, or false if there is an error.
4292 shmread() taints the variable. See also L<perlipc/"SysV IPC">,
4293 C<IPC::SysV> documentation, and the C<IPC::Shareable> module from CPAN.
4295 =item shutdown SOCKET,HOW
4297 Shuts down a socket connection in the manner indicated by HOW, which
4298 has the same interpretation as in the system call of the same name.
4300 shutdown(SOCKET, 0); # I/we have stopped reading data
4301 shutdown(SOCKET, 1); # I/we have stopped writing data
4302 shutdown(SOCKET, 2); # I/we have stopped using this socket
4304 This is useful with sockets when you want to tell the other
4305 side you're done writing but not done reading, or vice versa.
4306 It's also a more insistent form of close because it also
4307 disables the file descriptor in any forked copies in other
4314 Returns the sine of EXPR (expressed in radians). If EXPR is omitted,
4315 returns sine of C<$_>.
4317 For the inverse sine operation, you may use the C<Math::Trig::asin>
4318 function, or use this relation:
4320 sub asin { atan2($_[0], sqrt(1 - $_[0] * $_[0])) }
4326 Causes the script to sleep for EXPR seconds, or forever if no EXPR.
4327 May be interrupted if the process receives a signal such as C<SIGALRM>.
4328 Returns the number of seconds actually slept. You probably cannot
4329 mix C<alarm> and C<sleep> calls, because C<sleep> is often implemented
4332 On some older systems, it may sleep up to a full second less than what
4333 you requested, depending on how it counts seconds. Most modern systems
4334 always sleep the full amount. They may appear to sleep longer than that,
4335 however, because your process might not be scheduled right away in a
4336 busy multitasking system.
4338 For delays of finer granularity than one second, you may use Perl's
4339 C<syscall> interface to access setitimer(2) if your system supports
4340 it, or else see L</select> above. The Time::HiRes module (from CPAN,
4341 and starting from Perl 5.8 part of the standard distribution) may also
4344 See also the POSIX module's C<pause> function.
4346 =item sockatmark SOCKET
4348 Returns true if the socket is positioned at the out-of-band mark
4349 (also known as the urgent data mark), false otherwise. Use right
4350 after reading from the socket.
4352 Not available directly, one has to import the function from
4353 the IO::Socket extension
4355 use IO::Socket 'sockatmark';
4357 Even this doesn't guarantee that sockatmark() really is available,
4358 though, because sockatmark() is a relatively recent addition to
4359 the family of socket functions. If it is unavailable, attempt to
4362 IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture ...
4364 See also L<IO::Socket>.
4366 =item socket SOCKET,DOMAIN,TYPE,PROTOCOL
4368 Opens a socket of the specified kind and attaches it to filehandle
4369 SOCKET. DOMAIN, TYPE, and PROTOCOL are specified the same as for
4370 the system call of the same name. You should C<use Socket> first
4371 to get the proper definitions imported. See the examples in
4372 L<perlipc/"Sockets: Client/Server Communication">.
4374 On systems that support a close-on-exec flag on files, the flag will
4375 be set for the newly opened file descriptor, as determined by the
4376 value of $^F. See L<perlvar/$^F>.
4378 =item socketpair SOCKET1,SOCKET2,DOMAIN,TYPE,PROTOCOL
4380 Creates an unnamed pair of sockets in the specified domain, of the
4381 specified type. DOMAIN, TYPE, and PROTOCOL are specified the same as
4382 for the system call of the same name. If unimplemented, yields a fatal
4383 error. Returns true if successful.
4385 On systems that support a close-on-exec flag on files, the flag will
4386 be set for the newly opened file descriptors, as determined by the value
4387 of $^F. See L<perlvar/$^F>.
4389 Some systems defined C<pipe> in terms of C<socketpair>, in which a call
4390 to C<pipe(Rdr, Wtr)> is essentially:
4393 socketpair(Rdr, Wtr, AF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM, PF_UNSPEC);
4394 shutdown(Rdr, 1); # no more writing for reader
4395 shutdown(Wtr, 0); # no more reading for writer
4397 See L<perlipc> for an example of socketpair use.
4399 =item sort SUBNAME LIST
4401 =item sort BLOCK LIST
4405 Sorts the LIST and returns the sorted list value. If SUBNAME or BLOCK
4406 is omitted, C<sort>s in standard string comparison order. If SUBNAME is
4407 specified, it gives the name of a subroutine that returns an integer
4408 less than, equal to, or greater than C<0>, depending on how the elements
4409 of the list are to be ordered. (The C<< <=> >> and C<cmp>
4410 operators are extremely useful in such routines.) SUBNAME may be a
4411 scalar variable name (unsubscripted), in which case the value provides
4412 the name of (or a reference to) the actual subroutine to use. In place
4413 of a SUBNAME, you can provide a BLOCK as an anonymous, in-line sort
4416 If the subroutine's prototype is C<($$)>, the elements to be compared
4417 are passed by reference in C<@_>, as for a normal subroutine. This is
4418 slower than unprototyped subroutines, where the elements to be
4419 compared are passed into the subroutine
4420 as the package global variables $a and $b (see example below). Note that
4421 in the latter case, it is usually counter-productive to declare $a and
4424 In either case, the subroutine may not be recursive. The values to be
4425 compared are always passed by reference, so don't modify them.
4427 You also cannot exit out of the sort block or subroutine using any of the
4428 loop control operators described in L<perlsyn> or with C<goto>.
4430 When C<use locale> is in effect, C<sort LIST> sorts LIST according to the
4431 current collation locale. See L<perllocale>.
4433 Perl does B<not> guarantee that sort is stable. (A I<stable> sort
4434 preserves the input order of elements that compare equal.) 5.7 and
4435 5.8 happen to use a stable mergesort, but 5.6 and earlier used quicksort,
4436 which is not stable. Do not assume that future perls will continue to
4442 @articles = sort @files;
4444 # same thing, but with explicit sort routine
4445 @articles = sort {$a cmp $b} @files;
4447 # now case-insensitively
4448 @articles = sort {uc($a) cmp uc($b)} @files;
4450 # same thing in reversed order
4451 @articles = sort {$b cmp $a} @files;
4453 # sort numerically ascending
4454 @articles = sort {$a <=> $b} @files;
4456 # sort numerically descending
4457 @articles = sort {$b <=> $a} @files;
4459 # this sorts the %age hash by value instead of key
4460 # using an in-line function
4461 @eldest = sort { $age{$b} <=> $age{$a} } keys %age;
4463 # sort using explicit subroutine name
4465 $age{$a} <=> $age{$b}; # presuming numeric
4467 @sortedclass = sort byage @class;
4469 sub backwards { $b cmp $a }
4470 @harry = qw(dog cat x Cain Abel);
4471 @george = qw(gone chased yz Punished Axed);
4473 # prints AbelCaincatdogx
4474 print sort backwards @harry;
4475 # prints xdogcatCainAbel
4476 print sort @george, 'to', @harry;
4477 # prints AbelAxedCainPunishedcatchaseddoggonetoxyz
4479 # inefficiently sort by descending numeric compare using
4480 # the first integer after the first = sign, or the
4481 # whole record case-insensitively otherwise
4484 ($b =~ /=(\d+)/)[0] <=> ($a =~ /=(\d+)/)[0]
4489 # same thing, but much more efficiently;
4490 # we'll build auxiliary indices instead
4494 push @nums, /=(\d+)/;
4499 $nums[$b] <=> $nums[$a]
4501 $caps[$a] cmp $caps[$b]
4505 # same thing, but without any temps
4506 @new = map { $_->[0] }
4507 sort { $b->[1] <=> $a->[1]
4510 } map { [$_, /=(\d+)/, uc($_)] } @old;
4512 # using a prototype allows you to use any comparison subroutine
4513 # as a sort subroutine (including other package's subroutines)
4515 sub backwards ($$) { $_[1] cmp $_[0]; } # $a and $b are not set here
4518 @new = sort other::backwards @old;
4520 If you're using strict, you I<must not> declare $a
4521 and $b as lexicals. They are package globals. That means
4522 if you're in the C<main> package and type
4524 @articles = sort {$b <=> $a} @files;
4526 then C<$a> and C<$b> are C<$main::a> and C<$main::b> (or C<$::a> and C<$::b>),
4527 but if you're in the C<FooPack> package, it's the same as typing
4529 @articles = sort {$FooPack::b <=> $FooPack::a} @files;
4531 The comparison function is required to behave. If it returns
4532 inconsistent results (sometimes saying C<$x[1]> is less than C<$x[2]> and
4533 sometimes saying the opposite, for example) the results are not
4536 =item splice ARRAY,OFFSET,LENGTH,LIST
4538 =item splice ARRAY,OFFSET,LENGTH
4540 =item splice ARRAY,OFFSET
4544 Removes the elements designated by OFFSET and LENGTH from an array, and
4545 replaces them with the elements of LIST, if any. In list context,
4546 returns the elements removed from the array. In scalar context,
4547 returns the last element removed, or C<undef> if no elements are
4548 removed. The array grows or shrinks as necessary.
4549 If OFFSET is negative then it starts that far from the end of the array.
4550 If LENGTH is omitted, removes everything from OFFSET onward.
4551 If LENGTH is negative, leaves that many elements off the end of the array.
4552 If both OFFSET and LENGTH are omitted, removes everything.
4554 The following equivalences hold (assuming C<$[ == 0>):
4556 push(@a,$x,$y) splice(@a,@a,0,$x,$y)
4557 pop(@a) splice(@a,-1)
4558 shift(@a) splice(@a,0,1)
4559 unshift(@a,$x,$y) splice(@a,0,0,$x,$y)
4560 $a[$x] = $y splice(@a,$x,1,$y)
4562 Example, assuming array lengths are passed before arrays:
4564 sub aeq { # compare two list values
4565 my(@a) = splice(@_,0,shift);
4566 my(@b) = splice(@_,0,shift);
4567 return 0 unless @a == @b; # same len?
4569 return 0 if pop(@a) ne pop(@b);
4573 if (&aeq($len,@foo[1..$len],0+@bar,@bar)) { ... }
4575 =item split /PATTERN/,EXPR,LIMIT
4577 =item split /PATTERN/,EXPR
4579 =item split /PATTERN/
4583 Splits a string into a list of strings and returns that list. By default,
4584 empty leading fields are preserved, and empty trailing ones are deleted.
4586 In scalar context, returns the number of fields found and splits into
4587 the C<@_> array. Use of split in scalar context is deprecated, however,
4588 because it clobbers your subroutine arguments.
4590 If EXPR is omitted, splits the C<$_> string. If PATTERN is also omitted,
4591 splits on whitespace (after skipping any leading whitespace). Anything
4592 matching PATTERN is taken to be a delimiter separating the fields. (Note
4593 that the delimiter may be longer than one character.)
4595 If LIMIT is specified and positive, it represents the maximum number
4596 of fields the EXPR will be split into, though the actual number of
4597 fields returned depends on the number of times PATTERN matches within
4598 EXPR. If LIMIT is unspecified or zero, trailing null fields are
4599 stripped (which potential users of C<pop> would do well to remember).
4600 If LIMIT is negative, it is treated as if an arbitrarily large LIMIT
4601 had been specified. Note that splitting an EXPR that evaluates to the
4602 empty string always returns the empty list, regardless of the LIMIT
4605 A pattern matching the null string (not to be confused with
4606 a null pattern C<//>, which is just one member of the set of patterns
4607 matching a null string) will split the value of EXPR into separate
4608 characters at each point it matches that way. For example:
4610 print join(':', split(/ */, 'hi there'));
4612 produces the output 'h:i:t:h:e:r:e'.
4614 Using the empty pattern C<//> specifically matches the null string, and is
4615 not be confused with the use of C<//> to mean "the last successful pattern
4618 Empty leading (or trailing) fields are produced when there positive width
4619 matches at the beginning (or end) of the string; a zero-width match at the
4620 beginning (or end) of the string does not produce an empty field. For
4623 print join(':', split(/(?=\w)/, 'hi there!'));
4625 produces the output 'h:i :t:h:e:r:e!'.
4627 The LIMIT parameter can be used to split a line partially
4629 ($login, $passwd, $remainder) = split(/:/, $_, 3);
4631 When assigning to a list, if LIMIT is omitted, Perl supplies a LIMIT
4632 one larger than the number of variables in the list, to avoid
4633 unnecessary work. For the list above LIMIT would have been 4 by
4634 default. In time critical applications it behooves you not to split
4635 into more fields than you really need.
4637 If the PATTERN contains parentheses, additional list elements are
4638 created from each matching substring in the delimiter.
4640 split(/([,-])/, "1-10,20", 3);
4642 produces the list value
4644 (1, '-', 10, ',', 20)
4646 If you had the entire header of a normal Unix email message in $header,
4647 you could split it up into fields and their values this way:
4649 $header =~ s/\n\s+/ /g; # fix continuation lines
4650 %hdrs = (UNIX_FROM => split /^(\S*?):\s*/m, $header);
4652 The pattern C</PATTERN/> may be replaced with an expression to specify
4653 patterns that vary at runtime. (To do runtime compilation only once,
4654 use C</$variable/o>.)
4656 As a special case, specifying a PATTERN of space (C<' '>) will split on
4657 white space just as C<split> with no arguments does. Thus, C<split(' ')> can
4658 be used to emulate B<awk>'s default behavior, whereas C<split(/ /)>
4659 will give you as many null initial fields as there are leading spaces.
4660 A C<split> on C</\s+/> is like a C<split(' ')> except that any leading
4661 whitespace produces a null first field. A C<split> with no arguments
4662 really does a C<split(' ', $_)> internally.
4664 A PATTERN of C</^/> is treated as if it were C</^/m>, since it isn't
4669 open(PASSWD, '/etc/passwd');
4672 ($login, $passwd, $uid, $gid,
4673 $gcos, $home, $shell) = split(/:/);
4677 As with regular pattern matching, any capturing parentheses that are not
4678 matched in a C<split()> will be set to C<undef> when returned:
4680 @fields = split /(A)|B/, "1A2B3";
4681 # @fields is (1, 'A', 2, undef, 3)
4683 =item sprintf FORMAT, LIST
4685 Returns a string formatted by the usual C<printf> conventions of the C
4686 library function C<sprintf>. See below for more details
4687 and see L<sprintf(3)> or L<printf(3)> on your system for an explanation of
4688 the general principles.
4692 # Format number with up to 8 leading zeroes
4693 $result = sprintf("%08d", $number);
4695 # Round number to 3 digits after decimal point
4696 $rounded = sprintf("%.3f", $number);
4698 Perl does its own C<sprintf> formatting--it emulates the C
4699 function C<sprintf>, but it doesn't use it (except for floating-point
4700 numbers, and even then only the standard modifiers are allowed). As a
4701 result, any non-standard extensions in your local C<sprintf> are not
4702 available from Perl.
4704 Unlike C<printf>, C<sprintf> does not do what you probably mean when you
4705 pass it an array as your first argument. The array is given scalar context,
4706 and instead of using the 0th element of the array as the format, Perl will
4707 use the count of elements in the array as the format, which is almost never
4710 Perl's C<sprintf> permits the following universally-known conversions:
4713 %c a character with the given number
4715 %d a signed integer, in decimal
4716 %u an unsigned integer, in decimal
4717 %o an unsigned integer, in octal
4718 %x an unsigned integer, in hexadecimal
4719 %e a floating-point number, in scientific notation
4720 %f a floating-point number, in fixed decimal notation
4721 %g a floating-point number, in %e or %f notation
4723 In addition, Perl permits the following widely-supported conversions:
4725 %X like %x, but using upper-case letters
4726 %E like %e, but using an upper-case "E"
4727 %G like %g, but with an upper-case "E" (if applicable)
4728 %b an unsigned integer, in binary
4729 %p a pointer (outputs the Perl value's address in hexadecimal)
4730 %n special: *stores* the number of characters output so far
4731 into the next variable in the parameter list
4733 Finally, for backward (and we do mean "backward") compatibility, Perl
4734 permits these unnecessary but widely-supported conversions:
4737 %D a synonym for %ld
4738 %U a synonym for %lu
4739 %O a synonym for %lo
4742 Note that the number of exponent digits in the scientific notation by
4743 C<%e>, C<%E>, C<%g> and C<%G> for numbers with the modulus of the
4744 exponent less than 100 is system-dependent: it may be three or less
4745 (zero-padded as necessary). In other words, 1.23 times ten to the
4746 99th may be either "1.23e99" or "1.23e099".
4748 Perl permits the following universally-known flags between the C<%>
4749 and the conversion letter:
4751 space prefix positive number with a space
4752 + prefix positive number with a plus sign
4753 - left-justify within the field
4754 0 use zeros, not spaces, to right-justify
4755 # prefix non-zero octal with "0", non-zero hex with "0x"
4756 number minimum field width
4757 .number "precision": digits after decimal point for
4758 floating-point, max length for string, minimum length
4760 l interpret integer as C type "long" or "unsigned long"
4761 h interpret integer as C type "short" or "unsigned short"
4762 If no flags, interpret integer as C type "int" or "unsigned"
4764 Perl supports parameter ordering, in other words, fetching the
4765 parameters in some explicitly specified "random" ordering as opposed
4766 to the default implicit sequential ordering. The syntax is, instead
4767 of the C<%> and C<*>, to use C<%>I<digits>C<$> and C<*>I<digits>C<$>,
4768 where the I<digits> is the wanted index, from one upwards. For example:
4770 printf "%2\$d %1\$d\n", 12, 34; # will print "34 12\n"
4771 printf "%*2\$d\n", 12, 3; # will print " 12\n"
4773 Note that using the reordering syntax does not interfere with the usual
4774 implicit sequential fetching of the parameters:
4776 printf "%2\$d %d\n", 12, 34; # will print "34 12\n"
4777 printf "%2\$d %d %d\n", 12, 34; # will print "34 12 34\n"
4778 printf "%3\$d %d %d\n", 12, 34, 56; # will print "56 12 34\n"
4779 printf "%2\$*3\$d %d\n", 12, 34, 3; # will print " 34 12\n"
4780 printf "%*3\$2\$d %d\n", 12, 34, 3; # will print " 34 12\n"
4782 There are also two Perl-specific flags:
4784 V interpret integer as Perl's standard integer type
4785 v interpret string as a vector of integers, output as
4786 numbers separated either by dots, or by an arbitrary
4787 string received from the argument list when the flag
4790 Where a number would appear in the flags, an asterisk (C<*>) may be
4791 used instead, in which case Perl uses the next item in the parameter
4792 list as the given number (that is, as the field width or precision).
4793 If a field width obtained through C<*> is negative, it has the same
4794 effect as the C<-> flag: left-justification.
4796 The C<v> flag is useful for displaying ordinal values of characters
4797 in arbitrary strings:
4799 printf "version is v%vd\n", $^V; # Perl's version
4800 printf "address is %*vX\n", ":", $addr; # IPv6 address
4801 printf "bits are %*vb\n", " ", $bits; # random bitstring
4803 If C<use locale> is in effect, the character used for the decimal
4804 point in formatted real numbers is affected by the LC_NUMERIC locale.
4807 If Perl understands "quads" (64-bit integers) (this requires
4808 either that the platform natively support quads or that Perl
4809 be specifically compiled to support quads), the characters
4813 print quads, and they may optionally be preceded by
4821 You can find out whether your Perl supports quads via L<Config>:
4824 ($Config{use64bitint} eq 'define' || $Config{longsize} == 8) &&
4827 If Perl understands "long doubles" (this requires that the platform
4828 support long doubles), the flags
4832 may optionally be preceded by
4840 You can find out whether your Perl supports long doubles via L<Config>:
4843 $Config{d_longdbl} eq 'define' && print "long doubles\n";
4849 Return the square root of EXPR. If EXPR is omitted, returns square
4850 root of C<$_>. Only works on non-negative operands, unless you've
4851 loaded the standard Math::Complex module.
4854 print sqrt(-2); # prints 1.4142135623731i
4860 Sets the random number seed for the C<rand> operator.
4862 The point of the function is to "seed" the C<rand> function so that
4863 C<rand> can produce a different sequence each time you run your
4866 If srand() is not called explicitly, it is called implicitly at the
4867 first use of the C<rand> operator. However, this was not the case in
4868 versions of Perl before 5.004, so if your script will run under older
4869 Perl versions, it should call C<srand>.
4871 Most programs won't even call srand() at all, except those that
4872 need a cryptographically-strong starting point rather than the
4873 generally acceptable default, which is based on time of day,
4874 process ID, and memory allocation, or the F</dev/urandom> device,
4877 You can call srand($seed) with the same $seed to reproduce the
4878 I<same> sequence from rand(), but this is usually reserved for
4879 generating predictable results for testing or debugging.
4880 Otherwise, don't call srand() more than once in your program.
4882 Do B<not> call srand() (i.e. without an argument) more than once in
4883 a script. The internal state of the random number generator should
4884 contain more entropy than can be provided by any seed, so calling
4885 srand() again actually I<loses> randomness.
4887 Most implementations of C<srand> take an integer and will silently
4888 truncate decimal numbers. This means C<srand(42)> will usually
4889 produce the same results as C<srand(42.1)>. To be safe, always pass
4890 C<srand> an integer.
4892 In versions of Perl prior to 5.004 the default seed was just the
4893 current C<time>. This isn't a particularly good seed, so many old
4894 programs supply their own seed value (often C<time ^ $$> or C<time ^
4895 ($$ + ($$ << 15))>), but that isn't necessary any more.
4897 Note that you need something much more random than the default seed for
4898 cryptographic purposes. Checksumming the compressed output of one or more
4899 rapidly changing operating system status programs is the usual method. For
4902 srand (time ^ $$ ^ unpack "%L*", `ps axww | gzip`);
4904 If you're particularly concerned with this, see the C<Math::TrulyRandom>
4907 Frequently called programs (like CGI scripts) that simply use
4911 for a seed can fall prey to the mathematical property that
4915 one-third of the time. So don't do that.
4917 =item stat FILEHANDLE
4923 Returns a 13-element list giving the status info for a file, either
4924 the file opened via FILEHANDLE, or named by EXPR. If EXPR is omitted,
4925 it stats C<$_>. Returns a null list if the stat fails. Typically used
4928 ($dev,$ino,$mode,$nlink,$uid,$gid,$rdev,$size,
4929 $atime,$mtime,$ctime,$blksize,$blocks)
4932 Not all fields are supported on all filesystem types. Here are the
4933 meaning of the fields:
4935 0 dev device number of filesystem
4937 2 mode file mode (type and permissions)
4938 3 nlink number of (hard) links to the file
4939 4 uid numeric user ID of file's owner
4940 5 gid numeric group ID of file's owner
4941 6 rdev the device identifier (special files only)
4942 7 size total size of file, in bytes
4943 8 atime last access time in seconds since the epoch
4944 9 mtime last modify time in seconds since the epoch
4945 10 ctime inode change time (NOT creation time!) in seconds since the epoch
4946 11 blksize preferred block size for file system I/O
4947 12 blocks actual number of blocks allocated
4949 (The epoch was at 00:00 January 1, 1970 GMT.)
4951 If stat is passed the special filehandle consisting of an underline, no
4952 stat is done, but the current contents of the stat structure from the
4953 last stat or filetest are returned. Example:
4955 if (-x $file && (($d) = stat(_)) && $d < 0) {
4956 print "$file is executable NFS file\n";
4959 (This works on machines only for which the device number is negative
4962 Because the mode contains both the file type and its permissions, you
4963 should mask off the file type portion and (s)printf using a C<"%o">
4964 if you want to see the real permissions.
4966 $mode = (stat($filename))[2];
4967 printf "Permissions are %04o\n", $mode & 07777;
4969 In scalar context, C<stat> returns a boolean value indicating success
4970 or failure, and, if successful, sets the information associated with
4971 the special filehandle C<_>.
4973 The File::stat module provides a convenient, by-name access mechanism:
4976 $sb = stat($filename);
4977 printf "File is %s, size is %s, perm %04o, mtime %s\n",
4978 $filename, $sb->size, $sb->mode & 07777,
4979 scalar localtime $sb->mtime;
4981 You can import symbolic mode constants (C<S_IF*>) and functions
4982 (C<S_IS*>) from the Fcntl module:
4986 $mode = (stat($filename))[2];
4988 $user_rwx = ($mode & S_IRWXU) >> 6;
4989 $group_read = ($mode & S_IRGRP) >> 3;
4990 $other_execute = $mode & S_IXOTH;
4992 printf "Permissions are %04o\n", S_ISMODE($mode), "\n";
4994 $is_setuid = $mode & S_ISUID;
4995 $is_setgid = S_ISDIR($mode);
4997 You could write the last two using the C<-u> and C<-d> operators.
4998 The commonly available S_IF* constants are
5000 # Permissions: read, write, execute, for user, group, others.
5002 S_IRWXU S_IRUSR S_IWUSR S_IXUSR
5003 S_IRWXG S_IRGRP S_IWGRP S_IXGRP
5004 S_IRWXO S_IROTH S_IWOTH S_IXOTH
5006 # Setuid/Setgid/Stickiness.
5008 S_ISUID S_ISGID S_ISVTX S_ISTXT
5010 # File types. Not necessarily all are available on your system.
5012 S_IFREG S_IFDIR S_IFLNK S_IFBLK S_ISCHR S_IFIFO S_IFSOCK S_IFWHT S_ENFMT
5014 # The following are compatibility aliases for S_IRUSR, S_IWUSR, S_IXUSR.
5016 S_IREAD S_IWRITE S_IEXEC
5018 and the S_IF* functions are
5020 S_IFMODE($mode) the part of $mode containing the permission bits
5021 and the setuid/setgid/sticky bits
5023 S_IFMT($mode) the part of $mode containing the file type
5024 which can be bit-anded with e.g. S_IFREG
5025 or with the following functions
5027 # The operators -f, -d, -l, -b, -c, -p, and -s.
5029 S_ISREG($mode) S_ISDIR($mode) S_ISLNK($mode)
5030 S_ISBLK($mode) S_ISCHR($mode) S_ISFIFO($mode) S_ISSOCK($mode)
5032 # No direct -X operator counterpart, but for the first one
5033 # the -g operator is often equivalent. The ENFMT stands for
5034 # record flocking enforcement, a platform-dependent feature.
5036 S_ISENFMT($mode) S_ISWHT($mode)
5038 See your native chmod(2) and stat(2) documentation for more details
5039 about the S_* constants.
5045 Takes extra time to study SCALAR (C<$_> if unspecified) in anticipation of
5046 doing many pattern matches on the string before it is next modified.
5047 This may or may not save time, depending on the nature and number of
5048 patterns you are searching on, and on the distribution of character
5049 frequencies in the string to be searched--you probably want to compare
5050 run times with and without it to see which runs faster. Those loops
5051 which scan for many short constant strings (including the constant
5052 parts of more complex patterns) will benefit most. You may have only
5053 one C<study> active at a time--if you study a different scalar the first
5054 is "unstudied". (The way C<study> works is this: a linked list of every
5055 character in the string to be searched is made, so we know, for
5056 example, where all the C<'k'> characters are. From each search string,
5057 the rarest character is selected, based on some static frequency tables
5058 constructed from some C programs and English text. Only those places
5059 that contain this "rarest" character are examined.)
5061 For example, here is a loop that inserts index producing entries
5062 before any line containing a certain pattern:
5066 print ".IX foo\n" if /\bfoo\b/;
5067 print ".IX bar\n" if /\bbar\b/;
5068 print ".IX blurfl\n" if /\bblurfl\b/;
5073 In searching for C</\bfoo\b/>, only those locations in C<$_> that contain C<f>
5074 will be looked at, because C<f> is rarer than C<o>. In general, this is
5075 a big win except in pathological cases. The only question is whether
5076 it saves you more time than it took to build the linked list in the
5079 Note that if you have to look for strings that you don't know till
5080 runtime, you can build an entire loop as a string and C<eval> that to
5081 avoid recompiling all your patterns all the time. Together with
5082 undefining C<$/> to input entire files as one record, this can be very
5083 fast, often faster than specialized programs like fgrep(1). The following
5084 scans a list of files (C<@files>) for a list of words (C<@words>), and prints
5085 out the names of those files that contain a match:
5087 $search = 'while (<>) { study;';
5088 foreach $word (@words) {
5089 $search .= "++\$seen{\$ARGV} if /\\b$word\\b/;\n";
5094 eval $search; # this screams
5095 $/ = "\n"; # put back to normal input delimiter
5096 foreach $file (sort keys(%seen)) {
5104 =item sub NAME BLOCK
5106 This is subroutine definition, not a real function I<per se>. With just a
5107 NAME (and possibly prototypes or attributes), it's just a forward declaration.
5108 Without a NAME, it's an anonymous function declaration, and does actually
5109 return a value: the CODE ref of the closure you just created. See L<perlsub>
5110 and L<perlref> for details.
5112 =item substr EXPR,OFFSET,LENGTH,REPLACEMENT
5114 =item substr EXPR,OFFSET,LENGTH
5116 =item substr EXPR,OFFSET
5118 Extracts a substring out of EXPR and returns it. First character is at
5119 offset C<0>, or whatever you've set C<$[> to (but don't do that).
5120 If OFFSET is negative (or more precisely, less than C<$[>), starts
5121 that far from the end of the string. If LENGTH is omitted, returns
5122 everything to the end of the string. If LENGTH is negative, leaves that
5123 many characters off the end of the string.
5125 You can use the substr() function as an lvalue, in which case EXPR
5126 must itself be an lvalue. If you assign something shorter than LENGTH,
5127 the string will shrink, and if you assign something longer than LENGTH,
5128 the string will grow to accommodate it. To keep the string the same
5129 length you may need to pad or chop your value using C<sprintf>.
5131 If OFFSET and LENGTH specify a substring that is partly outside the
5132 string, only the part within the string is returned. If the substring
5133 is beyond either end of the string, substr() returns the undefined
5134 value and produces a warning. When used as an lvalue, specifying a
5135 substring that is entirely outside the string is a fatal error.
5136 Here's an example showing the behavior for boundary cases:
5139 substr($name, 4) = 'dy'; # $name is now 'freddy'
5140 my $null = substr $name, 6, 2; # returns '' (no warning)
5141 my $oops = substr $name, 7; # returns undef, with warning
5142 substr($name, 7) = 'gap'; # fatal error
5144 An alternative to using substr() as an lvalue is to specify the
5145 replacement string as the 4th argument. This allows you to replace
5146 parts of the EXPR and return what was there before in one operation,
5147 just as you can with splice().
5149 =item symlink OLDFILE,NEWFILE
5151 Creates a new filename symbolically linked to the old filename.
5152 Returns C<1> for success, C<0> otherwise. On systems that don't support
5153 symbolic links, produces a fatal error at run time. To check for that,
5156 $symlink_exists = eval { symlink("",""); 1 };
5160 Calls the system call specified as the first element of the list,
5161 passing the remaining elements as arguments to the system call. If
5162 unimplemented, produces a fatal error. The arguments are interpreted
5163 as follows: if a given argument is numeric, the argument is passed as
5164 an int. If not, the pointer to the string value is passed. You are
5165 responsible to make sure a string is pre-extended long enough to
5166 receive any result that might be written into a string. You can't use a
5167 string literal (or other read-only string) as an argument to C<syscall>
5168 because Perl has to assume that any string pointer might be written
5170 integer arguments are not literals and have never been interpreted in a
5171 numeric context, you may need to add C<0> to them to force them to look
5172 like numbers. This emulates the C<syswrite> function (or vice versa):
5174 require 'syscall.ph'; # may need to run h2ph
5176 syscall(&SYS_write, fileno(STDOUT), $s, length $s);
5178 Note that Perl supports passing of up to only 14 arguments to your system call,
5179 which in practice should usually suffice.
5181 Syscall returns whatever value returned by the system call it calls.
5182 If the system call fails, C<syscall> returns C<-1> and sets C<$!> (errno).
5183 Note that some system calls can legitimately return C<-1>. The proper
5184 way to handle such calls is to assign C<$!=0;> before the call and
5185 check the value of C<$!> if syscall returns C<-1>.
5187 There's a problem with C<syscall(&SYS_pipe)>: it returns the file
5188 number of the read end of the pipe it creates. There is no way
5189 to retrieve the file number of the other end. You can avoid this
5190 problem by using C<pipe> instead.
5192 =item sysopen FILEHANDLE,FILENAME,MODE
5194 =item sysopen FILEHANDLE,FILENAME,MODE,PERMS
5196 Opens the file whose filename is given by FILENAME, and associates it
5197 with FILEHANDLE. If FILEHANDLE is an expression, its value is used as
5198 the name of the real filehandle wanted. This function calls the
5199 underlying operating system's C<open> function with the parameters
5200 FILENAME, MODE, PERMS.
5202 The possible values and flag bits of the MODE parameter are
5203 system-dependent; they are available via the standard module C<Fcntl>.
5204 See the documentation of your operating system's C<open> to see which
5205 values and flag bits are available. You may combine several flags
5206 using the C<|>-operator.
5208 Some of the most common values are C<O_RDONLY> for opening the file in
5209 read-only mode, C<O_WRONLY> for opening the file in write-only mode,
5210 and C<O_RDWR> for opening the file in read-write mode, and.
5212 For historical reasons, some values work on almost every system
5213 supported by perl: zero means read-only, one means write-only, and two
5214 means read/write. We know that these values do I<not> work under
5215 OS/390 & VM/ESA Unix and on the Macintosh; you probably don't want to
5216 use them in new code.
5218 If the file named by FILENAME does not exist and the C<open> call creates
5219 it (typically because MODE includes the C<O_CREAT> flag), then the value of
5220 PERMS specifies the permissions of the newly created file. If you omit
5221 the PERMS argument to C<sysopen>, Perl uses the octal value C<0666>.
5222 These permission values need to be in octal, and are modified by your
5223 process's current C<umask>.
5225 In many systems the C<O_EXCL> flag is available for opening files in
5226 exclusive mode. This is B<not> locking: exclusiveness means here that
5227 if the file already exists, sysopen() fails. The C<O_EXCL> wins
5230 Sometimes you may want to truncate an already-existing file: C<O_TRUNC>.
5232 You should seldom if ever use C<0644> as argument to C<sysopen>, because
5233 that takes away the user's option to have a more permissive umask.
5234 Better to omit it. See the perlfunc(1) entry on C<umask> for more
5237 Note that C<sysopen> depends on the fdopen() C library function.
5238 On many UNIX systems, fdopen() is known to fail when file descriptors
5239 exceed a certain value, typically 255. If you need more file
5240 descriptors than that, consider rebuilding Perl to use the C<sfio>
5241 library, or perhaps using the POSIX::open() function.
5243 See L<perlopentut> for a kinder, gentler explanation of opening files.
5245 =item sysread FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH,OFFSET
5247 =item sysread FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH
5249 Attempts to read LENGTH I<characters> of data into variable SCALAR from
5250 the specified FILEHANDLE, using the system call read(2). It bypasses
5251 buffered IO, so mixing this with other kinds of reads, C<print>,
5252 C<write>, C<seek>, C<tell>, or C<eof> can cause confusion because
5253 stdio usually buffers data. Returns the number of characters actually
5254 read, C<0> at end of file, or undef if there was an error. SCALAR
5255 will be grown or shrunk so that the last byte actually read is the
5256 last byte of the scalar after the read.
5258 Note the I<characters>: depending on the status of the filehandle,
5259 either (8-bit) bytes or characters are read. By default all
5260 filehandles operate on bytes, but for example if the filehandle has
5261 been opened with the C<:utf8> discipline (see L</open>, and the C<open>
5262 pragma, L<open>), the I/O will operate on characters, not bytes.
5264 An OFFSET may be specified to place the read data at some place in the
5265 string other than the beginning. A negative OFFSET specifies
5266 placement at that many characters counting backwards from the end of
5267 the string. A positive OFFSET greater than the length of SCALAR
5268 results in the string being padded to the required size with C<"\0">
5269 bytes before the result of the read is appended.
5271 There is no syseof() function, which is ok, since eof() doesn't work
5272 very well on device files (like ttys) anyway. Use sysread() and check
5273 for a return value for 0 to decide whether you're done.
5275 =item sysseek FILEHANDLE,POSITION,WHENCE
5277 Sets FILEHANDLE's system position I<in bytes> using the system call
5278 lseek(2). FILEHANDLE may be an expression whose value gives the name
5279 of the filehandle. The values for WHENCE are C<0> to set the new
5280 position to POSITION, C<1> to set the it to the current position plus
5281 POSITION, and C<2> to set it to EOF plus POSITION (typically
5284 Note the I<in bytes>: even if the filehandle has been set to operate
5285 on characters (for example by using the C<:utf8> discipline), tell()
5286 will return byte offsets, not character offsets (because implementing
5287 that would render sysseek() very slow).
5289 sysseek() bypasses normal buffered io, so mixing this with reads (other
5290 than C<sysread>, for example >< or read()) C<print>, C<write>,
5291 C<seek>, C<tell>, or C<eof> may cause confusion.
5293 For WHENCE, you may also use the constants C<SEEK_SET>, C<SEEK_CUR>,
5294 and C<SEEK_END> (start of the file, current position, end of the file)
5295 from the Fcntl module. Use of the constants is also more portable
5296 than relying on 0, 1, and 2. For example to define a "systell" function:
5298 use Fnctl 'SEEK_CUR';
5299 sub systell { sysseek($_[0], 0, SEEK_CUR) }
5301 Returns the new position, or the undefined value on failure. A position
5302 of zero is returned as the string C<"0 but true">; thus C<sysseek> returns
5303 true on success and false on failure, yet you can still easily determine
5308 =item system PROGRAM LIST
5310 Does exactly the same thing as C<exec LIST>, except that a fork is
5311 done first, and the parent process waits for the child process to
5312 complete. Note that argument processing varies depending on the
5313 number of arguments. If there is more than one argument in LIST,
5314 or if LIST is an array with more than one value, starts the program
5315 given by the first element of the list with arguments given by the
5316 rest of the list. If there is only one scalar argument, the argument
5317 is checked for shell metacharacters, and if there are any, the
5318 entire argument is passed to the system's command shell for parsing
5319 (this is C</bin/sh -c> on Unix platforms, but varies on other
5320 platforms). If there are no shell metacharacters in the argument,
5321 it is split into words and passed directly to C<execvp>, which is
5324 Beginning with v5.6.0, Perl will attempt to flush all files opened for
5325 output before any operation that may do a fork, but this may not be
5326 supported on some platforms (see L<perlport>). To be safe, you may need
5327 to set C<$|> ($AUTOFLUSH in English) or call the C<autoflush()> method
5328 of C<IO::Handle> on any open handles.
5330 The return value is the exit status of the program as
5331 returned by the C<wait> call. To get the actual exit value divide by
5332 256. See also L</exec>. This is I<not> what you want to use to capture
5333 the output from a command, for that you should use merely backticks or
5334 C<qx//>, as described in L<perlop/"`STRING`">. Return value of -1
5335 indicates a failure to start the program (inspect $! for the reason).
5337 Like C<exec>, C<system> allows you to lie to a program about its name if
5338 you use the C<system PROGRAM LIST> syntax. Again, see L</exec>.
5340 Because C<system> and backticks block C<SIGINT> and C<SIGQUIT>, killing the
5341 program they're running doesn't actually interrupt your program.
5343 @args = ("command", "arg1", "arg2");
5345 or die "system @args failed: $?"
5347 You can check all the failure possibilities by inspecting
5350 $exit_value = $? >> 8;
5351 $signal_num = $? & 127;
5352 $dumped_core = $? & 128;
5354 When the arguments get executed via the system shell, results
5355 and return codes will be subject to its quirks and capabilities.
5356 See L<perlop/"`STRING`"> and L</exec> for details.
5358 =item syswrite FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH,OFFSET
5360 =item syswrite FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH
5362 =item syswrite FILEHANDLE,SCALAR
5364 Attempts to write LENGTH characters of data from variable SCALAR to
5365 the specified FILEHANDLE, using the system call write(2). If LENGTH
5366 is not specified, writes whole SCALAR. It bypasses buffered IO, so
5367 mixing this with reads (other than C<sysread())>, C<print>, C<write>,
5368 C<seek>, C<tell>, or C<eof> may cause confusion because stdio usually
5369 buffers data. Returns the number of characters actually written, or
5370 C<undef> if there was an error. If the LENGTH is greater than the
5371 available data in the SCALAR after the OFFSET, only as much data as is
5372 available will be written.
5374 An OFFSET may be specified to write the data from some part of the
5375 string other than the beginning. A negative OFFSET specifies writing
5376 that many characters counting backwards from the end of the string.
5377 In the case the SCALAR is empty you can use OFFSET but only zero offset.
5379 Note the I<characters>: depending on the status of the filehandle,
5380 either (8-bit) bytes or characters are written. By default all
5381 filehandles operate on bytes, but for example if the filehandle has
5382 been opened with the C<:utf8> discipline (see L</open>, and the open
5383 pragma, L<open>), the I/O will operate on characters, not bytes.
5385 =item tell FILEHANDLE
5389 Returns the current position I<in bytes> for FILEHANDLE, or -1 on
5390 error. FILEHANDLE may be an expression whose value gives the name of
5391 the actual filehandle. If FILEHANDLE is omitted, assumes the file
5394 Note the I<in bytes>: even if the filehandle has been set to
5395 operate on characters (for example by using the C<:utf8> open
5396 discipline), tell() will return byte offsets, not character offsets
5397 (because that would render seek() and tell() rather slow).
5399 The return value of tell() for the standard streams like the STDIN
5400 depends on the operating system: it may return -1 or something else.
5401 tell() on pipes, fifos, and sockets usually returns -1.
5403 There is no C<systell> function. Use C<sysseek(FH, 0, 1)> for that.
5405 Do not use tell() on a filehandle that has been opened using
5406 sysopen(), use sysseek() for that as described above. Why? Because
5407 sysopen() creates unbuffered, "raw", filehandles, while open() creates
5408 buffered filehandles. sysseek() make sense only on the first kind,
5409 tell() only makes sense on the second kind.
5411 =item telldir DIRHANDLE
5413 Returns the current position of the C<readdir> routines on DIRHANDLE.
5414 Value may be given to C<seekdir> to access a particular location in a
5415 directory. Has the same caveats about possible directory compaction as
5416 the corresponding system library routine.
5418 =item tie VARIABLE,CLASSNAME,LIST
5420 This function binds a variable to a package class that will provide the
5421 implementation for the variable. VARIABLE is the name of the variable
5422 to be enchanted. CLASSNAME is the name of a class implementing objects
5423 of correct type. Any additional arguments are passed to the C<new>
5424 method of the class (meaning C<TIESCALAR>, C<TIEHANDLE>, C<TIEARRAY>,
5425 or C<TIEHASH>). Typically these are arguments such as might be passed
5426 to the C<dbm_open()> function of C. The object returned by the C<new>
5427 method is also returned by the C<tie> function, which would be useful
5428 if you want to access other methods in CLASSNAME.
5430 Note that functions such as C<keys> and C<values> may return huge lists
5431 when used on large objects, like DBM files. You may prefer to use the
5432 C<each> function to iterate over such. Example:
5434 # print out history file offsets
5436 tie(%HIST, 'NDBM_File', '/usr/lib/news/history', 1, 0);
5437 while (($key,$val) = each %HIST) {
5438 print $key, ' = ', unpack('L',$val), "\n";
5442 A class implementing a hash should have the following methods:
5444 TIEHASH classname, LIST
5446 STORE this, key, value
5451 NEXTKEY this, lastkey
5455 A class implementing an ordinary array should have the following methods:
5457 TIEARRAY classname, LIST
5459 STORE this, key, value
5461 STORESIZE this, count
5467 SPLICE this, offset, length, LIST
5472 A class implementing a file handle should have the following methods:
5474 TIEHANDLE classname, LIST
5475 READ this, scalar, length, offset
5478 WRITE this, scalar, length, offset
5480 PRINTF this, format, LIST
5484 SEEK this, position, whence
5486 OPEN this, mode, LIST
5491 A class implementing a scalar should have the following methods:
5493 TIESCALAR classname, LIST
5499 Not all methods indicated above need be implemented. See L<perltie>,
5500 L<Tie::Hash>, L<Tie::Array>, L<Tie::Scalar>, and L<Tie::Handle>.
5502 Unlike C<dbmopen>, the C<tie> function will not use or require a module
5503 for you--you need to do that explicitly yourself. See L<DB_File>
5504 or the F<Config> module for interesting C<tie> implementations.
5506 For further details see L<perltie>, L<"tied VARIABLE">.
5510 Returns a reference to the object underlying VARIABLE (the same value
5511 that was originally returned by the C<tie> call that bound the variable
5512 to a package.) Returns the undefined value if VARIABLE isn't tied to a
5517 Returns the number of non-leap seconds since whatever time the system
5518 considers to be the epoch (that's 00:00:00, January 1, 1904 for MacOS,
5519 and 00:00:00 UTC, January 1, 1970 for most other systems).
5520 Suitable for feeding to C<gmtime> and C<localtime>.
5522 For measuring time in better granularity than one second,
5523 you may use either the Time::HiRes module from CPAN, or
5524 if you have gettimeofday(2), you may be able to use the
5525 C<syscall> interface of Perl, see L<perlfaq8> for details.
5529 Returns a four-element list giving the user and system times, in
5530 seconds, for this process and the children of this process.
5532 ($user,$system,$cuser,$csystem) = times;
5534 In scalar context, C<times> returns C<$user>.
5538 The transliteration operator. Same as C<y///>. See L<perlop>.
5540 =item truncate FILEHANDLE,LENGTH
5542 =item truncate EXPR,LENGTH
5544 Truncates the file opened on FILEHANDLE, or named by EXPR, to the
5545 specified length. Produces a fatal error if truncate isn't implemented
5546 on your system. Returns true if successful, the undefined value
5553 Returns an uppercased version of EXPR. This is the internal function
5554 implementing the C<\U> escape in double-quoted strings. Respects
5555 current LC_CTYPE locale if C<use locale> in force. See L<perllocale>
5556 and L<perlunicode> for more details about locale and Unicode support.
5557 It does not attempt to do titlecase mapping on initial letters. See
5558 C<ucfirst> for that.
5560 If EXPR is omitted, uses C<$_>.
5566 Returns the value of EXPR with the first character in uppercase
5567 (titlecase in Unicode). This is the internal function implementing
5568 the C<\u> escape in double-quoted strings. Respects current LC_CTYPE
5569 locale if C<use locale> in force. See L<perllocale> and L<perlunicode>
5570 for more details about locale and Unicode support.
5572 If EXPR is omitted, uses C<$_>.
5578 Sets the umask for the process to EXPR and returns the previous value.
5579 If EXPR is omitted, merely returns the current umask.
5581 The Unix permission C<rwxr-x---> is represented as three sets of three
5582 bits, or three octal digits: C<0750> (the leading 0 indicates octal
5583 and isn't one of the digits). The C<umask> value is such a number
5584 representing disabled permissions bits. The permission (or "mode")
5585 values you pass C<mkdir> or C<sysopen> are modified by your umask, so
5586 even if you tell C<sysopen> to create a file with permissions C<0777>,
5587 if your umask is C<0022> then the file will actually be created with
5588 permissions C<0755>. If your C<umask> were C<0027> (group can't
5589 write; others can't read, write, or execute), then passing
5590 C<sysopen> C<0666> would create a file with mode C<0640> (C<0666 &~
5593 Here's some advice: supply a creation mode of C<0666> for regular
5594 files (in C<sysopen>) and one of C<0777> for directories (in
5595 C<mkdir>) and executable files. This gives users the freedom of
5596 choice: if they want protected files, they might choose process umasks
5597 of C<022>, C<027>, or even the particularly antisocial mask of C<077>.
5598 Programs should rarely if ever make policy decisions better left to
5599 the user. The exception to this is when writing files that should be
5600 kept private: mail files, web browser cookies, I<.rhosts> files, and
5603 If umask(2) is not implemented on your system and you are trying to
5604 restrict access for I<yourself> (i.e., (EXPR & 0700) > 0), produces a
5605 fatal error at run time. If umask(2) is not implemented and you are
5606 not trying to restrict access for yourself, returns C<undef>.
5608 Remember that a umask is a number, usually given in octal; it is I<not> a
5609 string of octal digits. See also L</oct>, if all you have is a string.
5615 Undefines the value of EXPR, which must be an lvalue. Use only on a
5616 scalar value, an array (using C<@>), a hash (using C<%>), a subroutine
5617 (using C<&>), or a typeglob (using <*>). (Saying C<undef $hash{$key}>
5618 will probably not do what you expect on most predefined variables or
5619 DBM list values, so don't do that; see L<delete>.) Always returns the
5620 undefined value. You can omit the EXPR, in which case nothing is
5621 undefined, but you still get an undefined value that you could, for
5622 instance, return from a subroutine, assign to a variable or pass as a
5623 parameter. Examples:
5626 undef $bar{'blurfl'}; # Compare to: delete $bar{'blurfl'};
5630 undef *xyz; # destroys $xyz, @xyz, %xyz, &xyz, etc.
5631 return (wantarray ? (undef, $errmsg) : undef) if $they_blew_it;
5632 select undef, undef, undef, 0.25;
5633 ($a, $b, undef, $c) = &foo; # Ignore third value returned
5635 Note that this is a unary operator, not a list operator.
5641 Deletes a list of files. Returns the number of files successfully
5644 $cnt = unlink 'a', 'b', 'c';
5648 Note: C<unlink> will not delete directories unless you are superuser and
5649 the B<-U> flag is supplied to Perl. Even if these conditions are
5650 met, be warned that unlinking a directory can inflict damage on your
5651 filesystem. Use C<rmdir> instead.
5653 If LIST is omitted, uses C<$_>.
5655 =item unpack TEMPLATE,EXPR
5657 C<unpack> does the reverse of C<pack>: it takes a string
5658 and expands it out into a list of values.
5659 (In scalar context, it returns merely the first value produced.)
5661 The string is broken into chunks described by the TEMPLATE. Each chunk
5662 is converted separately to a value. Typically, either the string is a result
5663 of C<pack>, or the bytes of the string represent a C structure of some
5666 The TEMPLATE has the same format as in the C<pack> function.
5667 Here's a subroutine that does substring:
5670 my($what,$where,$howmuch) = @_;
5671 unpack("x$where a$howmuch", $what);
5676 sub ordinal { unpack("c",$_[0]); } # same as ord()
5678 In addition to fields allowed in pack(), you may prefix a field with
5679 a %<number> to indicate that
5680 you want a <number>-bit checksum of the items instead of the items
5681 themselves. Default is a 16-bit checksum. Checksum is calculated by
5682 summing numeric values of expanded values (for string fields the sum of
5683 C<ord($char)> is taken, for bit fields the sum of zeroes and ones).
5685 For example, the following
5686 computes the same number as the System V sum program:
5690 unpack("%32C*",<>) % 65535;
5693 The following efficiently counts the number of set bits in a bit vector:
5695 $setbits = unpack("%32b*", $selectmask);
5697 The C<p> and C<P> formats should be used with care. Since Perl
5698 has no way of checking whether the value passed to C<unpack()>
5699 corresponds to a valid memory location, passing a pointer value that's
5700 not known to be valid is likely to have disastrous consequences.
5702 If the repeat count of a field is larger than what the remainder of
5703 the input string allows, repeat count is decreased. If the input string
5704 is longer than one described by the TEMPLATE, the rest is ignored.
5706 See L</pack> for more examples and notes.
5708 =item untie VARIABLE
5710 Breaks the binding between a variable and a package. (See C<tie>.)
5712 =item unshift ARRAY,LIST
5714 Does the opposite of a C<shift>. Or the opposite of a C<push>,
5715 depending on how you look at it. Prepends list to the front of the
5716 array, and returns the new number of elements in the array.
5718 unshift(@ARGV, '-e') unless $ARGV[0] =~ /^-/;
5720 Note the LIST is prepended whole, not one element at a time, so the
5721 prepended elements stay in the same order. Use C<reverse> to do the
5724 =item use Module VERSION LIST
5726 =item use Module VERSION
5728 =item use Module LIST
5734 Imports some semantics into the current package from the named module,
5735 generally by aliasing certain subroutine or variable names into your
5736 package. It is exactly equivalent to
5738 BEGIN { require Module; import Module LIST; }
5740 except that Module I<must> be a bareword.
5742 VERSION may be either a numeric argument such as 5.006, which will be
5743 compared to C<$]>, or a literal of the form v5.6.1, which will be compared
5744 to C<$^V> (aka $PERL_VERSION. A fatal error is produced if VERSION is
5745 greater than the version of the current Perl interpreter; Perl will not
5746 attempt to parse the rest of the file. Compare with L</require>, which can
5747 do a similar check at run time.
5749 Specifying VERSION as a literal of the form v5.6.1 should generally be
5750 avoided, because it leads to misleading error messages under earlier
5751 versions of Perl which do not support this syntax. The equivalent numeric
5752 version should be used instead.
5754 use v5.6.1; # compile time version check
5756 use 5.006_001; # ditto; preferred for backwards compatibility
5758 This is often useful if you need to check the current Perl version before
5759 C<use>ing library modules that have changed in incompatible ways from
5760 older versions of Perl. (We try not to do this more than we have to.)
5762 The C<BEGIN> forces the C<require> and C<import> to happen at compile time. The
5763 C<require> makes sure the module is loaded into memory if it hasn't been
5764 yet. The C<import> is not a builtin--it's just an ordinary static method
5765 call into the C<Module> package to tell the module to import the list of
5766 features back into the current package. The module can implement its
5767 C<import> method any way it likes, though most modules just choose to
5768 derive their C<import> method via inheritance from the C<Exporter> class that
5769 is defined in the C<Exporter> module. See L<Exporter>. If no C<import>
5770 method can be found then the call is skipped.
5772 If you do not want to call the package's C<import> method (for instance,
5773 to stop your namespace from being altered), explicitly supply the empty list:
5777 That is exactly equivalent to
5779 BEGIN { require Module }
5781 If the VERSION argument is present between Module and LIST, then the
5782 C<use> will call the VERSION method in class Module with the given
5783 version as an argument. The default VERSION method, inherited from
5784 the UNIVERSAL class, croaks if the given version is larger than the
5785 value of the variable C<$Module::VERSION>.
5787 Again, there is a distinction between omitting LIST (C<import> called
5788 with no arguments) and an explicit empty LIST C<()> (C<import> not
5789 called). Note that there is no comma after VERSION!
5791 Because this is a wide-open interface, pragmas (compiler directives)
5792 are also implemented this way. Currently implemented pragmas are:
5797 use sigtrap qw(SEGV BUS);
5798 use strict qw(subs vars refs);
5799 use subs qw(afunc blurfl);
5800 use warnings qw(all);
5802 Some of these pseudo-modules import semantics into the current
5803 block scope (like C<strict> or C<integer>, unlike ordinary modules,
5804 which import symbols into the current package (which are effective
5805 through the end of the file).
5807 There's a corresponding C<no> command that unimports meanings imported
5808 by C<use>, i.e., it calls C<unimport Module LIST> instead of C<import>.
5814 If no C<unimport> method can be found the call fails with a fatal error.
5816 See L<perlmodlib> for a list of standard modules and pragmas. See L<perlrun>
5817 for the C<-M> and C<-m> command-line options to perl that give C<use>
5818 functionality from the command-line.
5822 Changes the access and modification times on each file of a list of
5823 files. The first two elements of the list must be the NUMERICAL access
5824 and modification times, in that order. Returns the number of files
5825 successfully changed. The inode change time of each file is set
5826 to the current time. This code has the same effect as the C<touch>
5827 command if the files already exist:
5831 utime $now, $now, @ARGV;
5833 If the first two elements of the list are C<undef>, then the utime(2)
5834 function in the C library will be called with a null second argument.
5835 On most systems, this will set the file's access and modification
5836 times to the current time. (i.e. equivalent to the example above.)
5838 utime undef, undef, @ARGV;
5842 Returns a list consisting of all the values of the named hash. (In a
5843 scalar context, returns the number of values.) The values are
5844 returned in an apparently random order. The actual random order is
5845 subject to change in future versions of perl, but it is guaranteed to
5846 be the same order as either the C<keys> or C<each> function would
5847 produce on the same (unmodified) hash.
5849 Note that the values are not copied, which means modifying them will
5850 modify the contents of the hash:
5852 for (values %hash) { s/foo/bar/g } # modifies %hash values
5853 for (@hash{keys %hash}) { s/foo/bar/g } # same
5855 As a side effect, calling values() resets the HASH's internal iterator.
5856 See also C<keys>, C<each>, and C<sort>.
5858 =item vec EXPR,OFFSET,BITS
5860 Treats the string in EXPR as a bit vector made up of elements of
5861 width BITS, and returns the value of the element specified by OFFSET
5862 as an unsigned integer. BITS therefore specifies the number of bits
5863 that are reserved for each element in the bit vector. This must
5864 be a power of two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports
5867 If BITS is 8, "elements" coincide with bytes of the input string.
5869 If BITS is 16 or more, bytes of the input string are grouped into chunks
5870 of size BITS/8, and each group is converted to a number as with
5871 pack()/unpack() with big-endian formats C<n>/C<N> (and analogously
5872 for BITS==64). See L<"pack"> for details.
5874 If bits is 4 or less, the string is broken into bytes, then the bits
5875 of each byte are broken into 8/BITS groups. Bits of a byte are
5876 numbered in a little-endian-ish way, as in C<0x01>, C<0x02>,
5877 C<0x04>, C<0x08>, C<0x10>, C<0x20>, C<0x40>, C<0x80>. For example,
5878 breaking the single input byte C<chr(0x36)> into two groups gives a list
5879 C<(0x6, 0x3)>; breaking it into 4 groups gives C<(0x2, 0x1, 0x3, 0x0)>.
5881 C<vec> may also be assigned to, in which case parentheses are needed
5882 to give the expression the correct precedence as in
5884 vec($image, $max_x * $x + $y, 8) = 3;
5886 If the selected element is outside the string, the value 0 is returned.
5887 If an element off the end of the string is written to, Perl will first
5888 extend the string with sufficiently many zero bytes. It is an error
5889 to try to write off the beginning of the string (i.e. negative OFFSET).
5891 The string should not contain any character with the value > 255 (which
5892 can only happen if you're using UTF8 encoding). If it does, it will be
5893 treated as something which is not UTF8 encoded. When the C<vec> was
5894 assigned to, other parts of your program will also no longer consider the
5895 string to be UTF8 encoded. In other words, if you do have such characters
5896 in your string, vec() will operate on the actual byte string, and not the
5897 conceptual character string.
5899 Strings created with C<vec> can also be manipulated with the logical
5900 operators C<|>, C<&>, C<^>, and C<~>. These operators will assume a bit
5901 vector operation is desired when both operands are strings.
5902 See L<perlop/"Bitwise String Operators">.
5904 The following code will build up an ASCII string saying C<'PerlPerlPerl'>.
5905 The comments show the string after each step. Note that this code works
5906 in the same way on big-endian or little-endian machines.
5909 vec($foo, 0, 32) = 0x5065726C; # 'Perl'
5911 # $foo eq "Perl" eq "\x50\x65\x72\x6C", 32 bits
5912 print vec($foo, 0, 8); # prints 80 == 0x50 == ord('P')
5914 vec($foo, 2, 16) = 0x5065; # 'PerlPe'
5915 vec($foo, 3, 16) = 0x726C; # 'PerlPerl'
5916 vec($foo, 8, 8) = 0x50; # 'PerlPerlP'
5917 vec($foo, 9, 8) = 0x65; # 'PerlPerlPe'
5918 vec($foo, 20, 4) = 2; # 'PerlPerlPe' . "\x02"
5919 vec($foo, 21, 4) = 7; # 'PerlPerlPer'
5921 vec($foo, 45, 2) = 3; # 'PerlPerlPer' . "\x0c"
5922 vec($foo, 93, 1) = 1; # 'PerlPerlPer' . "\x2c"
5923 vec($foo, 94, 1) = 1; # 'PerlPerlPerl'
5926 To transform a bit vector into a string or list of 0's and 1's, use these:
5928 $bits = unpack("b*", $vector);
5929 @bits = split(//, unpack("b*", $vector));
5931 If you know the exact length in bits, it can be used in place of the C<*>.
5933 Here is an example to illustrate how the bits actually fall in place:
5939 unpack("V",$_) 01234567890123456789012345678901
5940 ------------------------------------------------------------------
5945 for ($shift=0; $shift < $width; ++$shift) {
5946 for ($off=0; $off < 32/$width; ++$off) {
5947 $str = pack("B*", "0"x32);
5948 $bits = (1<<$shift);
5949 vec($str, $off, $width) = $bits;
5950 $res = unpack("b*",$str);
5951 $val = unpack("V", $str);
5958 vec($_,@#,@#) = @<< == @######### @>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
5959 $off, $width, $bits, $val, $res
5963 Regardless of the machine architecture on which it is run, the above
5964 example should print the following table:
5967 unpack("V",$_) 01234567890123456789012345678901
5968 ------------------------------------------------------------------
5969 vec($_, 0, 1) = 1 == 1 10000000000000000000000000000000
5970 vec($_, 1, 1) = 1 == 2 01000000000000000000000000000000
5971 vec($_, 2, 1) = 1 == 4 00100000000000000000000000000000
5972 vec($_, 3, 1) = 1 == 8 00010000000000000000000000000000
5973 vec($_, 4, 1) = 1 == 16 00001000000000000000000000000000
5974 vec($_, 5, 1) = 1 == 32 00000100000000000000000000000000
5975 vec($_, 6, 1) = 1 == 64 00000010000000000000000000000000
5976 vec($_, 7, 1) = 1 == 128 00000001000000000000000000000000
5977 vec($_, 8, 1) = 1 == 256 00000000100000000000000000000000
5978 vec($_, 9, 1) = 1 == 512 00000000010000000000000000000000
5979 vec($_,10, 1) = 1 == 1024 00000000001000000000000000000000
5980 vec($_,11, 1) = 1 == 2048 00000000000100000000000000000000
5981 vec($_,12, 1) = 1 == 4096 00000000000010000000000000000000
5982 vec($_,13, 1) = 1 == 8192 00000000000001000000000000000000
5983 vec($_,14, 1) = 1 == 16384 00000000000000100000000000000000
5984 vec($_,15, 1) = 1 == 32768 00000000000000010000000000000000
5985 vec($_,16, 1) = 1 == 65536 00000000000000001000000000000000
5986 vec($_,17, 1) = 1 == 131072 00000000000000000100000000000000
5987 vec($_,18, 1) = 1 == 262144 00000000000000000010000000000000
5988 vec($_,19, 1) = 1 == 524288 00000000000000000001000000000000
5989 vec($_,20, 1) = 1 == 1048576 00000000000000000000100000000000
5990 vec($_,21, 1) = 1 == 2097152 00000000000000000000010000000000
5991 vec($_,22, 1) = 1 == 4194304 00000000000000000000001000000000
5992 vec($_,23, 1) = 1 == 8388608 00000000000000000000000100000000
5993 vec($_,24, 1) = 1 == 16777216 00000000000000000000000010000000
5994 vec($_,25, 1) = 1 == 33554432 00000000000000000000000001000000
5995 vec($_,26, 1) = 1 == 67108864 00000000000000000000000000100000
5996 vec($_,27, 1) = 1 == 134217728 00000000000000000000000000010000
5997 vec($_,28, 1) = 1 == 268435456 00000000000000000000000000001000
5998 vec($_,29, 1) = 1 == 536870912 00000000000000000000000000000100
5999 vec($_,30, 1) = 1 == 1073741824 00000000000000000000000000000010
6000 vec($_,31, 1) = 1 == 2147483648 00000000000000000000000000000001
6001 vec($_, 0, 2) = 1 == 1 10000000000000000000000000000000
6002 vec($_, 1, 2) = 1 == 4 00100000000000000000000000000000
6003 vec($_, 2, 2) = 1 == 16 00001000000000000000000000000000
6004 vec($_, 3, 2) = 1 == 64 00000010000000000000000000000000
6005 vec($_, 4, 2) = 1 == 256 00000000100000000000000000000000
6006 vec($_, 5, 2) = 1 == 1024 00000000001000000000000000000000
6007 vec($_, 6, 2) = 1 == 4096 00000000000010000000000000000000
6008 vec($_, 7, 2) = 1 == 16384 00000000000000100000000000000000
6009 vec($_, 8, 2) = 1 == 65536 00000000000000001000000000000000
6010 vec($_, 9, 2) = 1 == 262144 00000000000000000010000000000000
6011 vec($_,10, 2) = 1 == 1048576 00000000000000000000100000000000
6012 vec($_,11, 2) = 1 == 4194304 00000000000000000000001000000000
6013 vec($_,12, 2) = 1 == 16777216 00000000000000000000000010000000
6014 vec($_,13, 2) = 1 == 67108864 00000000000000000000000000100000
6015 vec($_,14, 2) = 1 == 268435456 00000000000000000000000000001000
6016 vec($_,15, 2) = 1 == 1073741824 00000000000000000000000000000010
6017 vec($_, 0, 2) = 2 == 2 01000000000000000000000000000000
6018 vec($_, 1, 2) = 2 == 8 00010000000000000000000000000000
6019 vec($_, 2, 2) = 2 == 32 00000100000000000000000000000000
6020 vec($_, 3, 2) = 2 == 128 00000001000000000000000000000000
6021 vec($_, 4, 2) = 2 == 512 00000000010000000000000000000000
6022 vec($_, 5, 2) = 2 == 2048 00000000000100000000000000000000
6023 vec($_, 6, 2) = 2 == 8192 00000000000001000000000000000000
6024 vec($_, 7, 2) = 2 == 32768 00000000000000010000000000000000
6025 vec($_, 8, 2) = 2 == 131072 00000000000000000100000000000000
6026 vec($_, 9, 2) = 2 == 524288 00000000000000000001000000000000
6027 vec($_,10, 2) = 2 == 2097152 00000000000000000000010000000000
6028 vec($_,11, 2) = 2 == 8388608 00000000000000000000000100000000
6029 vec($_,12, 2) = 2 == 33554432 00000000000000000000000001000000
6030 vec($_,13, 2) = 2 == 134217728 00000000000000000000000000010000
6031 vec($_,14, 2) = 2 == 536870912 00000000000000000000000000000100
6032 vec($_,15, 2) = 2 == 2147483648 00000000000000000000000000000001
6033 vec($_, 0, 4) = 1 == 1 10000000000000000000000000000000
6034 vec($_, 1, 4) = 1 == 16 00001000000000000000000000000000
6035 vec($_, 2, 4) = 1 == 256 00000000100000000000000000000000
6036 vec($_, 3, 4) = 1 == 4096 00000000000010000000000000000000
6037 vec($_, 4, 4) = 1 == 65536 00000000000000001000000000000000
6038 vec($_, 5, 4) = 1 == 1048576 00000000000000000000100000000000
6039 vec($_, 6, 4) = 1 == 16777216 00000000000000000000000010000000
6040 vec($_, 7, 4) = 1 == 268435456 00000000000000000000000000001000
6041 vec($_, 0, 4) = 2 == 2 01000000000000000000000000000000
6042 vec($_, 1, 4) = 2 == 32 00000100000000000000000000000000
6043 vec($_, 2, 4) = 2 == 512 00000000010000000000000000000000
6044 vec($_, 3, 4) = 2 == 8192 00000000000001000000000000000000
6045 vec($_, 4, 4) = 2 == 131072 00000000000000000100000000000000
6046 vec($_, 5, 4) = 2 == 2097152 00000000000000000000010000000000
6047 vec($_, 6, 4) = 2 == 33554432 00000000000000000000000001000000
6048 vec($_, 7, 4) = 2 == 536870912 00000000000000000000000000000100
6049 vec($_, 0, 4) = 4 == 4 00100000000000000000000000000000
6050 vec($_, 1, 4) = 4 == 64 00000010000000000000000000000000
6051 vec($_, 2, 4) = 4 == 1024 00000000001000000000000000000000
6052 vec($_, 3, 4) = 4 == 16384 00000000000000100000000000000000
6053 vec($_, 4, 4) = 4 == 262144 00000000000000000010000000000000
6054 vec($_, 5, 4) = 4 == 4194304 00000000000000000000001000000000
6055 vec($_, 6, 4) = 4 == 67108864 00000000000000000000000000100000
6056 vec($_, 7, 4) = 4 == 1073741824 00000000000000000000000000000010
6057 vec($_, 0, 4) = 8 == 8 00010000000000000000000000000000
6058 vec($_, 1, 4) = 8 == 128 00000001000000000000000000000000
6059 vec($_, 2, 4) = 8 == 2048 00000000000100000000000000000000
6060 vec($_, 3, 4) = 8 == 32768 00000000000000010000000000000000
6061 vec($_, 4, 4) = 8 == 524288 00000000000000000001000000000000
6062 vec($_, 5, 4) = 8 == 8388608 00000000000000000000000100000000
6063 vec($_, 6, 4) = 8 == 134217728 00000000000000000000000000010000
6064 vec($_, 7, 4) = 8 == 2147483648 00000000000000000000000000000001
6065 vec($_, 0, 8) = 1 == 1 10000000000000000000000000000000
6066 vec($_, 1, 8) = 1 == 256 00000000100000000000000000000000
6067 vec($_, 2, 8) = 1 == 65536 00000000000000001000000000000000
6068 vec($_, 3, 8) = 1 == 16777216 00000000000000000000000010000000
6069 vec($_, 0, 8) = 2 == 2 01000000000000000000000000000000
6070 vec($_, 1, 8) = 2 == 512 00000000010000000000000000000000
6071 vec($_, 2, 8) = 2 == 131072 00000000000000000100000000000000
6072 vec($_, 3, 8) = 2 == 33554432 00000000000000000000000001000000
6073 vec($_, 0, 8) = 4 == 4 00100000000000000000000000000000
6074 vec($_, 1, 8) = 4 == 1024 00000000001000000000000000000000
6075 vec($_, 2, 8) = 4 == 262144 00000000000000000010000000000000
6076 vec($_, 3, 8) = 4 == 67108864 00000000000000000000000000100000
6077 vec($_, 0, 8) = 8 == 8 00010000000000000000000000000000
6078 vec($_, 1, 8) = 8 == 2048 00000000000100000000000000000000
6079 vec($_, 2, 8) = 8 == 524288 00000000000000000001000000000000
6080 vec($_, 3, 8) = 8 == 134217728 00000000000000000000000000010000
6081 vec($_, 0, 8) = 16 == 16 00001000000000000000000000000000
6082 vec($_, 1, 8) = 16 == 4096 00000000000010000000000000000000
6083 vec($_, 2, 8) = 16 == 1048576 00000000000000000000100000000000
6084 vec($_, 3, 8) = 16 == 268435456 00000000000000000000000000001000
6085 vec($_, 0, 8) = 32 == 32 00000100000000000000000000000000
6086 vec($_, 1, 8) = 32 == 8192 00000000000001000000000000000000
6087 vec($_, 2, 8) = 32 == 2097152 00000000000000000000010000000000
6088 vec($_, 3, 8) = 32 == 536870912 00000000000000000000000000000100
6089 vec($_, 0, 8) = 64 == 64 00000010000000000000000000000000
6090 vec($_, 1, 8) = 64 == 16384 00000000000000100000000000000000
6091 vec($_, 2, 8) = 64 == 4194304 00000000000000000000001000000000
6092 vec($_, 3, 8) = 64 == 1073741824 00000000000000000000000000000010
6093 vec($_, 0, 8) = 128 == 128 00000001000000000000000000000000
6094 vec($_, 1, 8) = 128 == 32768 00000000000000010000000000000000
6095 vec($_, 2, 8) = 128 == 8388608 00000000000000000000000100000000
6096 vec($_, 3, 8) = 128 == 2147483648 00000000000000000000000000000001
6100 Behaves like the wait(2) system call on your system: it waits for a child
6101 process to terminate and returns the pid of the deceased process, or
6102 C<-1> if there are no child processes. The status is returned in C<$?>.
6103 Note that a return value of C<-1> could mean that child processes are
6104 being automatically reaped, as described in L<perlipc>.
6106 =item waitpid PID,FLAGS
6108 Waits for a particular child process to terminate and returns the pid of
6109 the deceased process, or C<-1> if there is no such child process. On some
6110 systems, a value of 0 indicates that there are processes still running.
6111 The status is returned in C<$?>. If you say
6113 use POSIX ":sys_wait_h";
6116 $kid = waitpid(-1, WNOHANG);
6119 then you can do a non-blocking wait for all pending zombie processes.
6120 Non-blocking wait is available on machines supporting either the
6121 waitpid(2) or wait4(2) system calls. However, waiting for a particular
6122 pid with FLAGS of C<0> is implemented everywhere. (Perl emulates the
6123 system call by remembering the status values of processes that have
6124 exited but have not been harvested by the Perl script yet.)
6126 Note that on some systems, a return value of C<-1> could mean that child
6127 processes are being automatically reaped. See L<perlipc> for details,
6128 and for other examples.
6132 Returns true if the context of the currently executing subroutine is
6133 looking for a list value. Returns false if the context is looking
6134 for a scalar. Returns the undefined value if the context is looking
6135 for no value (void context).
6137 return unless defined wantarray; # don't bother doing more
6138 my @a = complex_calculation();
6139 return wantarray ? @a : "@a";
6141 This function should have been named wantlist() instead.
6145 Produces a message on STDERR just like C<die>, but doesn't exit or throw
6148 If LIST is empty and C<$@> already contains a value (typically from a
6149 previous eval) that value is used after appending C<"\t...caught">
6150 to C<$@>. This is useful for staying almost, but not entirely similar to
6153 If C<$@> is empty then the string C<"Warning: Something's wrong"> is used.
6155 No message is printed if there is a C<$SIG{__WARN__}> handler
6156 installed. It is the handler's responsibility to deal with the message
6157 as it sees fit (like, for instance, converting it into a C<die>). Most
6158 handlers must therefore make arrangements to actually display the
6159 warnings that they are not prepared to deal with, by calling C<warn>
6160 again in the handler. Note that this is quite safe and will not
6161 produce an endless loop, since C<__WARN__> hooks are not called from
6164 You will find this behavior is slightly different from that of
6165 C<$SIG{__DIE__}> handlers (which don't suppress the error text, but can
6166 instead call C<die> again to change it).
6168 Using a C<__WARN__> handler provides a powerful way to silence all
6169 warnings (even the so-called mandatory ones). An example:
6171 # wipe out *all* compile-time warnings
6172 BEGIN { $SIG{'__WARN__'} = sub { warn $_[0] if $DOWARN } }
6174 my $foo = 20; # no warning about duplicate my $foo,
6175 # but hey, you asked for it!
6176 # no compile-time or run-time warnings before here
6179 # run-time warnings enabled after here
6180 warn "\$foo is alive and $foo!"; # does show up
6182 See L<perlvar> for details on setting C<%SIG> entries, and for more
6183 examples. See the Carp module for other kinds of warnings using its
6184 carp() and cluck() functions.
6186 =item write FILEHANDLE
6192 Writes a formatted record (possibly multi-line) to the specified FILEHANDLE,
6193 using the format associated with that file. By default the format for
6194 a file is the one having the same name as the filehandle, but the
6195 format for the current output channel (see the C<select> function) may be set
6196 explicitly by assigning the name of the format to the C<$~> variable.
6198 Top of form processing is handled automatically: if there is
6199 insufficient room on the current page for the formatted record, the
6200 page is advanced by writing a form feed, a special top-of-page format
6201 is used to format the new page header, and then the record is written.
6202 By default the top-of-page format is the name of the filehandle with
6203 "_TOP" appended, but it may be dynamically set to the format of your
6204 choice by assigning the name to the C<$^> variable while the filehandle is
6205 selected. The number of lines remaining on the current page is in
6206 variable C<$->, which can be set to C<0> to force a new page.
6208 If FILEHANDLE is unspecified, output goes to the current default output
6209 channel, which starts out as STDOUT but may be changed by the
6210 C<select> operator. If the FILEHANDLE is an EXPR, then the expression
6211 is evaluated and the resulting string is used to look up the name of
6212 the FILEHANDLE at run time. For more on formats, see L<perlform>.
6214 Note that write is I<not> the opposite of C<read>. Unfortunately.
6218 The transliteration operator. Same as C<tr///>. See L<perlop>.