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 and 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.
21 In the syntax descriptions that follow, list operators that expect a
22 list (and provide list context for the elements of the list) are shown
23 with LIST as an argument. Such a list may consist of any combination
24 of scalar arguments or list values; the list values will be included
25 in the list as if each individual element were interpolated at that
26 point in the list, forming a longer single-dimensional list value.
27 Elements of the LIST should be separated by commas.
29 Any function in the list below may be used either with or without
30 parentheses around its arguments. (The syntax descriptions omit the
31 parentheses.) If you use the parentheses, the simple (but occasionally
32 surprising) rule is this: It I<LOOKS> like a function, therefore it I<IS> a
33 function, and precedence doesn't matter. Otherwise it's a list
34 operator or unary operator, and precedence does matter. And whitespace
35 between the function and left parenthesis doesn't count--so you need to
38 print 1+2+4; # Prints 7.
39 print(1+2) + 4; # Prints 3.
40 print (1+2)+4; # Also prints 3!
41 print +(1+2)+4; # Prints 7.
42 print ((1+2)+4); # Prints 7.
44 If you run Perl with the B<-w> switch it can warn you about this. For
45 example, the third line above produces:
47 print (...) interpreted as function at - line 1.
48 Useless use of integer addition in void context at - line 1.
50 For functions that can be used in either a scalar or list context,
51 nonabortive failure is generally indicated in a scalar context by
52 returning the undefined value, and in a list context by returning the
55 Remember the following important rule: There is B<no rule> that relates
56 the behavior of an expression in list context to its behavior in scalar
57 context, or vice versa. It might do two totally different things.
58 Each operator and function decides which sort of value it would be most
59 appropriate to return in a scalar context. Some operators return the
60 length of the list that would have been returned in list context. Some
61 operators return the first value in the list. Some operators return the
62 last value in the list. Some operators return a count of successful
63 operations. In general, they do what you want, unless you want
66 An named array in scalar context is quite different from what would at
67 first glance appear to be a list in scalar context. You can't get a list
68 like C<(1,2,3)> into being in scalar context, because the compiler knows
69 the context at compile time. It would generate the scalar comma operator
70 there, not the list construction version of the comma. That means it
71 was never a list to start with.
73 In general, functions in Perl that serve as wrappers for system calls
74 of the same name (like chown(2), fork(2), closedir(2), etc.) all return
75 true when they succeed and C<undef> otherwise, as is usually mentioned
76 in the descriptions below. This is different from the C interfaces,
77 which return C<-1> on failure. Exceptions to this rule are C<wait()>,
78 C<waitpid()>, and C<syscall()>. System calls also set the special C<$!>
79 variable on failure. Other functions do not, except accidentally.
81 =head2 Perl Functions by Category
83 Here are Perl's functions (including things that look like
84 functions, like some keywords and named operators)
85 arranged by category. Some functions appear in more
90 =item Functions for SCALARs or strings
92 C<chomp>, C<chop>, C<chr>, C<crypt>, C<hex>, C<index>, C<lc>, C<lcfirst>,
93 C<length>, C<oct>, C<ord>, C<pack>, C<q/STRING/>, C<qq/STRING/>, C<reverse>,
94 C<rindex>, C<sprintf>, C<substr>, C<tr///>, C<uc>, C<ucfirst>, C<y///>
96 =item Regular expressions and pattern matching
98 C<m//>, C<pos>, C<quotemeta>, C<s///>, C<split>, C<study>, C<qr//>
100 =item Numeric functions
102 C<abs>, C<atan2>, C<cos>, C<exp>, C<hex>, C<int>, C<log>, C<oct>, C<rand>,
103 C<sin>, C<sqrt>, C<srand>
105 =item Functions for real @ARRAYs
107 C<pop>, C<push>, C<shift>, C<splice>, C<unshift>
109 =item Functions for list data
111 C<grep>, C<join>, C<map>, C<qw/STRING/>, C<reverse>, C<sort>, C<unpack>
113 =item Functions for real %HASHes
115 C<delete>, C<each>, C<exists>, C<keys>, C<values>
117 =item Input and output functions
119 C<binmode>, C<close>, C<closedir>, C<dbmclose>, C<dbmopen>, C<die>, C<eof>,
120 C<fileno>, C<flock>, C<format>, C<getc>, C<print>, C<printf>, C<read>,
121 C<readdir>, C<rewinddir>, C<seek>, C<seekdir>, C<select>, C<syscall>,
122 C<sysread>, C<sysseek>, C<syswrite>, C<tell>, C<telldir>, C<truncate>,
125 =item Functions for fixed length data or records
127 C<pack>, C<read>, C<syscall>, C<sysread>, C<syswrite>, C<unpack>, C<vec>
129 =item Functions for filehandles, files, or directories
131 C<-I<X>>, C<chdir>, C<chmod>, C<chown>, C<chroot>, C<fcntl>, C<glob>,
132 C<ioctl>, C<link>, C<lstat>, C<mkdir>, C<open>, C<opendir>,
133 C<readlink>, C<rename>, C<rmdir>, C<stat>, C<symlink>, C<umask>,
136 =item Keywords related to the control flow of your perl program
138 C<caller>, C<continue>, C<die>, C<do>, C<dump>, C<eval>, C<exit>,
139 C<goto>, C<last>, C<next>, C<redo>, C<return>, C<sub>, C<wantarray>
141 =item Keywords related to scoping
143 C<caller>, C<import>, C<local>, C<my>, C<package>, C<use>
145 =item Miscellaneous functions
147 C<defined>, C<dump>, C<eval>, C<formline>, C<local>, C<my>, C<reset>,
148 C<scalar>, C<undef>, C<wantarray>
150 =item Functions for processes and process groups
152 C<alarm>, C<exec>, C<fork>, C<getpgrp>, C<getppid>, C<getpriority>, C<kill>,
153 C<pipe>, C<qx/STRING/>, C<setpgrp>, C<setpriority>, C<sleep>, C<system>,
154 C<times>, C<wait>, C<waitpid>
156 =item Keywords related to perl modules
158 C<do>, C<import>, C<no>, C<package>, C<require>, C<use>
160 =item Keywords related to classes and object-orientedness
162 C<bless>, C<dbmclose>, C<dbmopen>, C<package>, C<ref>, C<tie>, C<tied>,
165 =item Low-level socket functions
167 C<accept>, C<bind>, C<connect>, C<getpeername>, C<getsockname>,
168 C<getsockopt>, C<listen>, C<recv>, C<send>, C<setsockopt>, C<shutdown>,
169 C<socket>, C<socketpair>
171 =item System V interprocess communication functions
173 C<msgctl>, C<msgget>, C<msgrcv>, C<msgsnd>, C<semctl>, C<semget>, C<semop>,
174 C<shmctl>, C<shmget>, C<shmread>, C<shmwrite>
176 =item Fetching user and group info
178 C<endgrent>, C<endhostent>, C<endnetent>, C<endpwent>, C<getgrent>,
179 C<getgrgid>, C<getgrnam>, C<getlogin>, C<getpwent>, C<getpwnam>,
180 C<getpwuid>, C<setgrent>, C<setpwent>
182 =item Fetching network info
184 C<endprotoent>, C<endservent>, C<gethostbyaddr>, C<gethostbyname>,
185 C<gethostent>, C<getnetbyaddr>, C<getnetbyname>, C<getnetent>,
186 C<getprotobyname>, C<getprotobynumber>, C<getprotoent>,
187 C<getservbyname>, C<getservbyport>, C<getservent>, C<sethostent>,
188 C<setnetent>, C<setprotoent>, C<setservent>
190 =item Time-related functions
192 C<gmtime>, C<localtime>, C<time>, C<times>
194 =item Functions new in perl5
196 C<abs>, C<bless>, C<chomp>, C<chr>, C<exists>, C<formline>, C<glob>,
197 C<import>, C<lc>, C<lcfirst>, C<map>, C<my>, C<no>, C<prototype>, C<qx>,
198 C<qw>, C<readline>, C<readpipe>, C<ref>, C<sub*>, C<sysopen>, C<tie>,
199 C<tied>, C<uc>, C<ucfirst>, C<untie>, C<use>
201 * - C<sub> was a keyword in perl4, but in perl5 it is an
202 operator, which can be used in expressions.
204 =item Functions obsoleted in perl5
206 C<dbmclose>, C<dbmopen>
212 Perl was born in UNIX and therefore it can access all the common UNIX
213 system calls. In non-UNIX environments the functionality of many
214 UNIX system calls may not be available or the details of the available
215 functionality may be slightly different. The Perl functions affected
218 C<-X>, C<binmode>, C<chmod>, C<chown>, C<chroot>, C<crypt>,
219 C<dbmclose>, C<dbmopen>, C<dump>, C<endgrent>, C<endhostent>,
220 C<endnetent>, C<endprotoent>, C<endpwent>, C<endservent>, C<exec>,
221 C<fcntl>, C<flock>, C<fork>, C<getgrent>, C<getgrgid>, C<gethostent>,
222 C<getlogin>, C<getnetbyaddr>, C<getnetbyname>, C<getnetent>,
223 C<getppid>, C<getprgp>, C<getpriority>, C<getprotobynumber>,
224 C<getprotoent>, C<getpwent>, C<getpwnam>, C<getpwuid>,
225 C<getservbyport>, C<getservent>, C<getsockopt>, C<glob>, C<ioctl>,
226 C<kill>, C<link>, C<lstat>, C<msgctl>, C<msgget>, C<msgrcv>,
227 C<msgsnd>, C<open>, C<pipe>, C<readlink>, C<select>, C<semctl>,
228 C<semget>, C<semop>, C<setgrent>, C<sethostent>, C<setnetent>,
229 C<setpgrp>, C<setpriority>, C<setprotoent>, C<setpwent>,
230 C<setservent>, C<setsockopt>, C<shmctl>, C<shmget>, C<shmread>,
231 C<shmwrite>, C<socketpair>, C<stat>, C<symlink>, C<syscall>,
232 C<sysopen>, C<system>, C<times>, C<truncate>, C<umask>, C<utime>,
235 For more information about the portability of these functions, see
236 L<perlport> and other available platform-specific documentation.
238 =head2 Alphabetical Listing of Perl Functions
242 =item I<-X> FILEHANDLE
248 A file test, where X is one of the letters listed below. This unary
249 operator takes one argument, either a filename or a filehandle, and
250 tests the associated file to see if something is true about it. If the
251 argument is omitted, tests C<$_>, except for C<-t>, which tests STDIN.
252 Unless otherwise documented, it returns C<1> for TRUE and C<''> for FALSE, or
253 the undefined value if the file doesn't exist. Despite the funny
254 names, precedence is the same as any other named unary operator, and
255 the argument may be parenthesized like any other unary operator. The
256 operator may be any of:
257 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>
258 X<-S>X<-b>X<-c>X<-t>X<-u>X<-g>X<-k>X<-T>X<-B>X<-M>X<-A>X<-C>
260 -r File is readable by effective uid/gid.
261 -w File is writable by effective uid/gid.
262 -x File is executable by effective uid/gid.
263 -o File is owned by effective uid.
265 -R File is readable by real uid/gid.
266 -W File is writable by real uid/gid.
267 -X File is executable by real uid/gid.
268 -O File is owned by real uid.
271 -z File has zero size.
272 -s File has nonzero size (returns size).
274 -f File is a plain file.
275 -d File is a directory.
276 -l File is a symbolic link.
277 -p File is a named pipe (FIFO), or Filehandle is a pipe.
279 -b File is a block special file.
280 -c File is a character special file.
281 -t Filehandle is opened to a tty.
283 -u File has setuid bit set.
284 -g File has setgid bit set.
285 -k File has sticky bit set.
287 -T File is a text file.
288 -B File is a binary file (opposite of -T).
290 -M Age of file in days when script started.
291 -A Same for access time.
292 -C Same for inode change time.
298 next unless -f $_; # ignore specials
302 The interpretation of the file permission operators C<-r>, C<-R>,
303 C<-w>, C<-W>, C<-x>, and C<-X> is by default based solely on the mode
304 of the file and the uids and gids of the user. There may be other
305 reasons you can't actually read, write, or execute the file. Such
306 reasons may be for example network filesystem access controls, ACLs
307 (access control lists), read-only filesystems, and unrecognized
310 Also note that, for the superuser on the local filesystems, C<-r>,
311 C<-R>, C<-w>, and C<-W> always return 1, and C<-x> and C<-X> return 1
312 if any execute bit is set in the mode. Scripts run by the superuser
313 may thus need to do a stat() to determine the actual mode of the file,
314 or temporarily set the uid to something else.
316 If you are using ACLs, there is a pragma called C<filetest> that may
317 produce more accurate results than the bare stat() mode bits.
319 When under the C<use filetest 'access'> the above-mentioned filetests
320 will test whether the permission can (not) be granted using the
321 access() family of system calls. Also note that the C<-x> and C<-X> may
322 under this pragma return true even if there are no execute permission
323 bits set (nor any extra execute permission ACLs). This strangeness is
324 due to the underlying system calls' definitions. Read the
325 documentation for the C<filetest> pragma for more information.
327 Note that C<-s/a/b/> does not do a negated substitution. Saying
328 C<-exp($foo)> still works as expected, however--only single letters
329 following a minus are interpreted as file tests.
331 The C<-T> and C<-B> switches work as follows. The first block or so of the
332 file is examined for odd characters such as strange control codes or
333 characters with the high bit set. If too many strange characters (E<gt>30%)
334 are found, it's a C<-B> file, otherwise it's a C<-T> file. Also, any file
335 containing null in the first block is considered a binary file. If C<-T>
336 or C<-B> is used on a filehandle, the current stdio buffer is examined
337 rather than the first block. Both C<-T> and C<-B> return TRUE on a null
338 file, or a file at EOF when testing a filehandle. Because you have to
339 read a file to do the C<-T> test, on most occasions you want to use a C<-f>
340 against the file first, as in C<next unless -f $file && -T $file>.
342 If any of the file tests (or either the C<stat()> or C<lstat()> operators) are given
343 the special filehandle consisting of a solitary underline, then the stat
344 structure of the previous file test (or stat operator) is used, saving
345 a system call. (This doesn't work with C<-t>, and you need to remember
346 that lstat() and C<-l> will leave values in the stat structure for the
347 symbolic link, not the real file.) Example:
349 print "Can do.\n" if -r $a || -w _ || -x _;
352 print "Readable\n" if -r _;
353 print "Writable\n" if -w _;
354 print "Executable\n" if -x _;
355 print "Setuid\n" if -u _;
356 print "Setgid\n" if -g _;
357 print "Sticky\n" if -k _;
358 print "Text\n" if -T _;
359 print "Binary\n" if -B _;
365 Returns the absolute value of its argument.
366 If VALUE is omitted, uses C<$_>.
368 =item accept NEWSOCKET,GENERICSOCKET
370 Accepts an incoming socket connect, just as the accept(2) system call
371 does. Returns the packed address if it succeeded, FALSE otherwise.
372 See example in L<perlipc/"Sockets: Client/Server Communication">.
378 Arranges to have a SIGALRM delivered to this process after the
379 specified number of seconds have elapsed. If SECONDS is not specified,
380 the value stored in C<$_> is used. (On some machines,
381 unfortunately, the elapsed time may be up to one second less than you
382 specified because of how seconds are counted.) Only one timer may be
383 counting at once. Each call disables the previous timer, and an
384 argument of C<0> may be supplied to cancel the previous timer without
385 starting a new one. The returned value is the amount of time remaining
386 on the previous timer.
388 For delays of finer granularity than one second, you may use Perl's
389 C<syscall()> interface to access setitimer(2) if your system supports it,
390 or else see L</select()>. It is usually a mistake to intermix C<alarm()>
391 and C<sleep()> calls.
393 If you want to use C<alarm()> to time out a system call you need to use an
394 C<eval()>/C<die()> pair. You can't rely on the alarm causing the system call to
395 fail with C<$!> set to C<EINTR> because Perl sets up signal handlers to
396 restart system calls on some systems. Using C<eval()>/C<die()> always works,
397 modulo the caveats given in L<perlipc/"Signals">.
400 local $SIG{ALRM} = sub { die "alarm\n" }; # NB: \n required
402 $nread = sysread SOCKET, $buffer, $size;
406 die unless $@ eq "alarm\n"; # propagate unexpected errors
415 Returns the arctangent of Y/X in the range -PI to PI.
417 For the tangent operation, you may use the C<POSIX::tan()>
418 function, or use the familiar relation:
420 sub tan { sin($_[0]) / cos($_[0]) }
422 =item bind SOCKET,NAME
424 Binds a network address to a socket, just as the bind system call
425 does. Returns TRUE if it succeeded, FALSE otherwise. NAME should be a
426 packed address of the appropriate type for the socket. See the examples in
427 L<perlipc/"Sockets: Client/Server Communication">.
429 =item binmode FILEHANDLE
431 Arranges for the file to be read or written in "binary" mode in operating
432 systems that distinguish between binary and text files. Files that are
433 not in binary mode have CR LF sequences translated to LF on input and LF
434 translated to CR LF on output. Binmode has no effect under Unix; in MS-DOS
435 and similarly archaic systems, it may be imperative--otherwise your
436 MS-DOS-damaged C library may mangle your file. The key distinction between
437 systems that need C<binmode()> and those that don't is their text file
438 formats. Systems like Unix, MacOS, and Plan9 that delimit lines with a single
439 character, and that encode that character in C as C<"\n">, do not need
440 C<binmode()>. The rest need it. If FILEHANDLE is an expression, the value
441 is taken as the name of the filehandle.
443 =item bless REF,CLASSNAME
447 This function tells the thingy referenced by REF that it is now
448 an object in the CLASSNAME package--or the current package if no CLASSNAME
449 is specified, which is often the case. It returns the reference for
450 convenience, because a C<bless()> is often the last thing in a constructor.
451 Always use the two-argument version if the function doing the blessing
452 might be inherited by a derived class. See L<perltoot> and L<perlobj>
453 for more about the blessing (and blessings) of objects.
455 Consider always blessing objects in CLASSNAMEs that are mixed case.
456 Namespaces with all lowercase names are considered reserved for Perl
457 pragmata. Builtin types have all uppercase names, so to prevent confusion,
458 it is best to avoid such package names as well.
460 See L<perlmod/"Perl Modules">.
466 Returns the context of the current subroutine call. In scalar context,
467 returns the caller's package name if there is a caller, that is, if
468 we're in a subroutine or C<eval()> or C<require()>, and the undefined value
469 otherwise. In list context, returns
471 ($package, $filename, $line) = caller;
473 With EXPR, it returns some extra information that the debugger uses to
474 print a stack trace. The value of EXPR indicates how many call frames
475 to go back before the current one.
477 ($package, $filename, $line, $subroutine,
478 $hasargs, $wantarray, $evaltext, $is_require) = caller($i);
480 Here C<$subroutine> may be C<"(eval)"> if the frame is not a subroutine
481 call, but an C<eval()>. In such a case additional elements C<$evaltext> and
482 C<$is_require> are set: C<$is_require> is true if the frame is created by a
483 C<require> or C<use> statement, C<$evaltext> contains the text of the
484 C<eval EXPR> statement. In particular, for a C<eval BLOCK> statement,
485 C<$filename> is C<"(eval)">, but C<$evaltext> is undefined. (Note also that
486 each C<use> statement creates a C<require> frame inside an C<eval EXPR>)
489 Furthermore, when called from within the DB package, caller returns more
490 detailed information: it sets the list variable C<@DB::args> to be the
491 arguments with which the subroutine was invoked.
493 Be aware that the optimizer might have optimized call frames away before
494 C<caller()> had a chance to get the information. That means that C<caller(N)>
495 might not return information about the call frame you expect it do, for
496 C<N E<gt> 1>. In particular, C<@DB::args> might have information from the
497 previous time C<caller()> was called.
501 Changes the working directory to EXPR, if possible. If EXPR is
502 omitted, changes to home directory. Returns TRUE upon success, FALSE
503 otherwise. See example under C<die()>.
507 Changes the permissions of a list of files. The first element of the
508 list must be the numerical mode, which should probably be an octal
509 number, and which definitely should I<not> a string of octal digits:
510 C<0644> is okay, C<'0644'> is not. Returns the number of files
511 successfully changed. See also L</oct>, if all you have is a string.
513 $cnt = chmod 0755, 'foo', 'bar';
514 chmod 0755, @executables;
515 $mode = '0644'; chmod $mode, 'foo'; # !!! sets mode to
517 $mode = '0644'; chmod oct($mode), 'foo'; # this is better
518 $mode = 0644; chmod $mode, 'foo'; # this is best
526 This is a slightly safer version of L</chop>. It removes any
527 line ending that corresponds to the current value of C<$/> (also known as
528 $INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR in the C<English> module). It returns the total
529 number of characters removed from all its arguments. It's often used to
530 remove the newline from the end of an input record when you're worried
531 that the final record may be missing its newline. When in paragraph mode
532 (C<$/ = "">), it removes all trailing newlines from the string. If
533 VARIABLE is omitted, it chomps C<$_>. Example:
536 chomp; # avoid \n on last field
541 You can actually chomp anything that's an lvalue, including an assignment:
544 chomp($answer = <STDIN>);
546 If you chomp a list, each element is chomped, and the total number of
547 characters removed is returned.
555 Chops off the last character of a string and returns the character
556 chopped. It's used primarily to remove the newline from the end of an
557 input record, but is much more efficient than C<s/\n//> because it neither
558 scans nor copies the string. If VARIABLE is omitted, chops C<$_>.
562 chop; # avoid \n on last field
567 You can actually chop anything that's an lvalue, including an assignment:
570 chop($answer = <STDIN>);
572 If you chop a list, each element is chopped. Only the value of the
573 last C<chop()> is returned.
575 Note that C<chop()> returns the last character. To return all but the last
576 character, use C<substr($string, 0, -1)>.
580 Changes the owner (and group) of a list of files. The first two
581 elements of the list must be the I<NUMERICAL> uid and gid, in that order.
582 Returns the number of files successfully changed.
584 $cnt = chown $uid, $gid, 'foo', 'bar';
585 chown $uid, $gid, @filenames;
587 Here's an example that looks up nonnumeric uids in the passwd file:
590 chop($user = <STDIN>);
592 chop($pattern = <STDIN>);
594 ($login,$pass,$uid,$gid) = getpwnam($user)
595 or die "$user not in passwd file";
597 @ary = glob($pattern); # expand filenames
598 chown $uid, $gid, @ary;
600 On most systems, you are not allowed to change the ownership of the
601 file unless you're the superuser, although you should be able to change
602 the group to any of your secondary groups. On insecure systems, these
603 restrictions may be relaxed, but this is not a portable assumption.
609 Returns the character represented by that NUMBER in the character set.
610 For example, C<chr(65)> is C<"A"> in either ASCII or Unicode, and
611 chr(0x263a) is a Unicode smiley face (but only within the scope of a
612 C<use utf8>). For the reverse, use L</ord>.
614 If NUMBER is omitted, uses C<$_>.
616 =item chroot FILENAME
620 This function works like the system call by the same name: it makes the
621 named directory the new root directory for all further pathnames that
622 begin with a C<"/"> by your process and all its children. (It doesn't
623 change your current working directory, which is unaffected.) For security
624 reasons, this call is restricted to the superuser. If FILENAME is
625 omitted, does a C<chroot()> to C<$_>.
627 =item close FILEHANDLE
631 Closes the file or pipe associated with the file handle, returning TRUE
632 only if stdio successfully flushes buffers and closes the system file
633 descriptor. Closes the currently selected filehandle if the argument
636 You don't have to close FILEHANDLE if you are immediately going to do
637 another C<open()> on it, because C<open()> will close it for you. (See
638 C<open()>.) However, an explicit C<close()> on an input file resets the line
639 counter (C<$.>), while the implicit close done by C<open()> does not.
641 If the file handle came from a piped open C<close()> will additionally
642 return FALSE if one of the other system calls involved fails or if the
643 program exits with non-zero status. (If the only problem was that the
644 program exited non-zero C<$!> will be set to C<0>.) Also, closing a pipe
645 waits for the process executing on the pipe to complete, in case you
646 want to look at the output of the pipe afterwards. Closing a pipe
647 explicitly also puts the exit status value of the command into C<$?>.
651 open(OUTPUT, '|sort >foo') # pipe to sort
652 or die "Can't start sort: $!";
653 #... # print stuff to output
654 close OUTPUT # wait for sort to finish
655 or warn $! ? "Error closing sort pipe: $!"
656 : "Exit status $? from sort";
657 open(INPUT, 'foo') # get sort's results
658 or die "Can't open 'foo' for input: $!";
660 FILEHANDLE may be an expression whose value can be used as an indirect
661 filehandle, usually the real filehandle name.
663 =item closedir DIRHANDLE
665 Closes a directory opened by C<opendir()> and returns the success of that
668 DIRHANDLE may be an expression whose value can be used as an indirect
669 dirhandle, usually the real dirhandle name.
671 =item connect SOCKET,NAME
673 Attempts to connect to a remote socket, just as the connect system call
674 does. Returns TRUE if it succeeded, FALSE otherwise. NAME should be a
675 packed address of the appropriate type for the socket. See the examples in
676 L<perlipc/"Sockets: Client/Server Communication">.
680 Actually a flow control statement rather than a function. If there is a
681 C<continue> BLOCK attached to a BLOCK (typically in a C<while> or
682 C<foreach>), it is always executed just before the conditional is about to
683 be evaluated again, just like the third part of a C<for> loop in C. Thus
684 it can be used to increment a loop variable, even when the loop has been
685 continued via the C<next> statement (which is similar to the C C<continue>
688 C<last>, C<next>, or C<redo> may appear within a C<continue>
689 block. C<last> and C<redo> will behave as if they had been executed within
690 the main block. So will C<next>, but since it will execute a C<continue>
691 block, it may be more entertaining.
694 ### redo always comes here
697 ### next always comes here
699 # then back the top to re-check EXPR
701 ### last always comes here
703 Omitting the C<continue> section is semantically equivalent to using an
704 empty one, logically enough. In that case, C<next> goes directly back
705 to check the condition at the top of the loop.
709 Returns the cosine of EXPR (expressed in radians). If EXPR is omitted,
710 takes cosine of C<$_>.
712 For the inverse cosine operation, you may use the C<POSIX::acos()>
713 function, or use this relation:
715 sub acos { atan2( sqrt(1 - $_[0] * $_[0]), $_[0] ) }
717 =item crypt PLAINTEXT,SALT
719 Encrypts a string exactly like the crypt(3) function in the C library
720 (assuming that you actually have a version there that has not been
721 extirpated as a potential munition). This can prove useful for checking
722 the password file for lousy passwords, amongst other things. Only the
723 guys wearing white hats should do this.
725 Note that C<crypt()> is intended to be a one-way function, much like breaking
726 eggs to make an omelette. There is no (known) corresponding decrypt
727 function. As a result, this function isn't all that useful for
728 cryptography. (For that, see your nearby CPAN mirror.)
730 When verifying an existing encrypted string you should use the encrypted
731 text as the salt (like C<crypt($plain, $crypted) eq $crypted>). This
732 allows your code to work with the standard C<crypt()> and with more
733 exotic implementations. When choosing a new salt create a random two
734 character string whose characters come from the set C<[./0-9A-Za-z]>
735 (like C<join '', ('.', '/', 0..9, 'A'..'Z', 'a'..'z')[rand 64, rand 64]>).
737 Here's an example that makes sure that whoever runs this program knows
740 $pwd = (getpwuid($<))[1];
744 chomp($word = <STDIN>);
748 if (crypt($word, $pwd) ne $pwd) {
754 Of course, typing in your own password to whoever asks you
759 [This function has been superseded by the C<untie()> function.]
761 Breaks the binding between a DBM file and a hash.
763 =item dbmopen HASH,DBNAME,MODE
765 [This function has been superseded by the C<tie()> function.]
767 This binds a dbm(3), ndbm(3), sdbm(3), gdbm(3), or Berkeley DB file to a
768 hash. HASH is the name of the hash. (Unlike normal C<open()>, the first
769 argument is I<NOT> a filehandle, even though it looks like one). DBNAME
770 is the name of the database (without the F<.dir> or F<.pag> extension if
771 any). If the database does not exist, it is created with protection
772 specified by MODE (as modified by the C<umask()>). If your system supports
773 only the older DBM functions, you may perform only one C<dbmopen()> in your
774 program. In older versions of Perl, if your system had neither DBM nor
775 ndbm, calling C<dbmopen()> produced a fatal error; it now falls back to
778 If you don't have write access to the DBM file, you can only read hash
779 variables, not set them. If you want to test whether you can write,
780 either use file tests or try setting a dummy hash entry inside an C<eval()>,
781 which will trap the error.
783 Note that functions such as C<keys()> and C<values()> may return huge lists
784 when used on large DBM files. You may prefer to use the C<each()>
785 function to iterate over large DBM files. Example:
787 # print out history file offsets
788 dbmopen(%HIST,'/usr/lib/news/history',0666);
789 while (($key,$val) = each %HIST) {
790 print $key, ' = ', unpack('L',$val), "\n";
794 See also L<AnyDBM_File> for a more general description of the pros and
795 cons of the various dbm approaches, as well as L<DB_File> for a particularly
802 Returns a Boolean value telling whether EXPR has a value other than
803 the undefined value C<undef>. If EXPR is not present, C<$_> will be
806 Many operations return C<undef> to indicate failure, end of file,
807 system error, uninitialized variable, and other exceptional
808 conditions. This function allows you to distinguish C<undef> from
809 other values. (A simple Boolean test will not distinguish among
810 C<undef>, zero, the empty string, and C<"0">, which are all equally
811 false.) Note that since C<undef> is a valid scalar, its presence
812 doesn't I<necessarily> indicate an exceptional condition: C<pop()>
813 returns C<undef> when its argument is an empty array, I<or> when the
814 element to return happens to be C<undef>.
816 You may also use C<defined()> to check whether a subroutine exists, by
817 saying C<defined &func> without parentheses. On the other hand, use
818 of C<defined()> upon aggregates (hashes and arrays) is not guaranteed to
819 produce intuitive results, and should probably be avoided.
821 When used on a hash element, it tells you whether the value is defined,
822 not whether the key exists in the hash. Use L</exists> for the latter
827 print if defined $switch{'D'};
828 print "$val\n" while defined($val = pop(@ary));
829 die "Can't readlink $sym: $!"
830 unless defined($value = readlink $sym);
831 sub foo { defined &$bar ? &$bar(@_) : die "No bar"; }
832 $debugging = 0 unless defined $debugging;
834 Note: Many folks tend to overuse C<defined()>, and then are surprised to
835 discover that the number C<0> and C<""> (the zero-length string) are, in fact,
836 defined values. For example, if you say
840 The pattern match succeeds, and C<$1> is defined, despite the fact that it
841 matched "nothing". But it didn't really match nothing--rather, it
842 matched something that happened to be C<0> characters long. This is all
843 very above-board and honest. When a function returns an undefined value,
844 it's an admission that it couldn't give you an honest answer. So you
845 should use C<defined()> only when you're questioning the integrity of what
846 you're trying to do. At other times, a simple comparison to C<0> or C<""> is
849 Currently, using C<defined()> on an entire array or hash reports whether
850 memory for that aggregate has ever been allocated. So an array you set
851 to the empty list appears undefined initially, and one that once was full
852 and that you then set to the empty list still appears defined. You
853 should instead use a simple test for size:
855 if (@an_array) { print "has array elements\n" }
856 if (%a_hash) { print "has hash members\n" }
858 Using C<undef()> on these, however, does clear their memory and then report
859 them as not defined anymore, but you shouldn't do that unless you don't
860 plan to use them again, because it saves time when you load them up
861 again to have memory already ready to be filled. The normal way to
862 free up space used by an aggregate is to assign the empty list.
864 This counterintuitive behavior of C<defined()> on aggregates may be
865 changed, fixed, or broken in a future release of Perl.
867 See also L</undef>, L</exists>, L</ref>.
871 Deletes the specified key(s) and their associated values from a hash.
872 For each key, returns the deleted value associated with that key, or
873 the undefined value if there was no such key. Deleting from C<$ENV{}>
874 modifies the environment. Deleting from a hash tied to a DBM file
875 deletes the entry from the DBM file. (But deleting from a C<tie()>d hash
876 doesn't necessarily return anything.)
878 The following deletes all the values of a hash:
880 foreach $key (keys %HASH) {
886 delete @HASH{keys %HASH}
888 (But both of these are slower than just assigning the empty list, or
889 using C<undef()>.) Note that the EXPR can be arbitrarily complicated as
890 long as the final operation is a hash element lookup or hash slice:
892 delete $ref->[$x][$y]{$key};
893 delete @{$ref->[$x][$y]}{$key1, $key2, @morekeys};
897 Outside an C<eval()>, prints the value of LIST to C<STDERR> and exits with
898 the current value of C<$!> (errno). If C<$!> is C<0>, exits with the value of
899 C<($? E<gt>E<gt> 8)> (backtick `command` status). If C<($? E<gt>E<gt> 8)>
900 is C<0>, exits with C<255>. Inside an C<eval(),> the error message is stuffed into
901 C<$@> and the C<eval()> is terminated with the undefined value. This makes
902 C<die()> the way to raise an exception.
906 die "Can't cd to spool: $!\n" unless chdir '/usr/spool/news';
907 chdir '/usr/spool/news' or die "Can't cd to spool: $!\n"
909 If the value of EXPR does not end in a newline, the current script line
910 number and input line number (if any) are also printed, and a newline
911 is supplied. Hint: sometimes appending C<", stopped"> to your message
912 will cause it to make better sense when the string C<"at foo line 123"> is
913 appended. Suppose you are running script "canasta".
915 die "/etc/games is no good";
916 die "/etc/games is no good, stopped";
918 produce, respectively
920 /etc/games is no good at canasta line 123.
921 /etc/games is no good, stopped at canasta line 123.
923 See also C<exit()> and C<warn()>.
925 If LIST is empty and C<$@> already contains a value (typically from a
926 previous eval) that value is reused after appending C<"\t...propagated">.
927 This is useful for propagating exceptions:
930 die unless $@ =~ /Expected exception/;
932 If C<$@> is empty then the string C<"Died"> is used.
934 You can arrange for a callback to be run just before the C<die()> does
935 its deed, by setting the C<$SIG{__DIE__}> hook. The associated handler
936 will be called with the error text and can change the error message, if
937 it sees fit, by calling C<die()> again. See L<perlvar/$SIG{expr}> for details on
938 setting C<%SIG> entries, and L<"eval BLOCK"> for some examples.
940 Note that the C<$SIG{__DIE__}> hook is called even inside eval()ed
941 blocks/strings. If one wants the hook to do nothing in such
946 as the first line of the handler (see L<perlvar/$^S>).
950 Not really a function. Returns the value of the last command in the
951 sequence of commands indicated by BLOCK. When modified by a loop
952 modifier, executes the BLOCK once before testing the loop condition.
953 (On other statements the loop modifiers test the conditional first.)
955 C<do BLOCK> does I<not> count as a loop, so the loop control statements
956 C<next>, C<last> or C<redo> cannot be used to leave or restart the block.
958 =item do SUBROUTINE(LIST)
960 A deprecated form of subroutine call. See L<perlsub>.
964 Uses the value of EXPR as a filename and executes the contents of the
965 file as a Perl script. Its primary use is to include subroutines
966 from a Perl subroutine library.
972 scalar eval `cat stat.pl`;
974 except that it's more efficient and concise, keeps track of the
975 current filename for error messages, and searches all the B<-I>
976 libraries if the file isn't in the current directory (see also the @INC
977 array in L<perlvar/Predefined Names>). It is also different in how
978 code evaluated with C<do FILENAME> doesn't see lexicals in the enclosing
979 scope like C<eval STRING> does. It's the same, however, in that it does
980 reparse the file every time you call it, so you probably don't want to
981 do this inside a loop.
983 If C<do> cannot read the file, it returns undef and sets C<$!> to the
984 error. If C<do> can read the file but cannot compile it, it
985 returns undef and sets an error message in C<$@>. If the file is
986 successfully compiled, C<do> returns the value of the last expression
989 Note that inclusion of library modules is better done with the
990 C<use()> and C<require()> operators, which also do automatic error checking
991 and raise an exception if there's a problem.
993 You might like to use C<do> to read in a program configuration
994 file. Manual error checking can be done this way:
996 # read in config files: system first, then user
997 for $file ("/share/prog/defaults.rc",
998 "$ENV{HOME}/.someprogrc") {
999 unless ($return = do $file) {
1000 warn "couldn't parse $file: $@" if $@;
1001 warn "couldn't do $file: $!" unless defined $return;
1002 warn "couldn't run $file" unless $return;
1008 This causes an immediate core dump. Primarily this is so that you can
1009 use the B<undump> program to turn your core dump into an executable binary
1010 after having initialized all your variables at the beginning of the
1011 program. When the new binary is executed it will begin by executing a
1012 C<goto LABEL> (with all the restrictions that C<goto> suffers). Think of
1013 it as a goto with an intervening core dump and reincarnation. If C<LABEL>
1014 is omitted, restarts the program from the top. WARNING: Any files
1015 opened at the time of the dump will NOT be open any more when the
1016 program is reincarnated, with possible resulting confusion on the part
1017 of Perl. See also B<-u> option in L<perlrun>.
1022 require 'getopt.pl';
1034 dump QUICKSTART if $ARGV[0] eq '-d';
1039 This operator is largely obsolete, partly because it's very hard to
1040 convert a core file into an executable, and because the real perl-to-C
1041 compiler has superseded it.
1045 When called in list context, returns a 2-element list consisting of the
1046 key and value for the next element of a hash, so that you can iterate over
1047 it. When called in scalar context, returns the key for only the "next"
1048 element in the hash. (Note: Keys may be C<"0"> or C<"">, which are logically
1049 false; you may wish to avoid constructs like C<while ($k = each %foo) {}>
1052 Entries are returned in an apparently random order. The actual random
1053 order is subject to change in future versions of perl, but it is guaranteed
1054 to be in the same order as either the C<keys()> or C<values()> function
1055 would produce on the same (unmodified) hash.
1057 When the hash is entirely read, a null array is returned in list context
1058 (which when assigned produces a FALSE (C<0>) value), and C<undef> in
1059 scalar context. The next call to C<each()> after that will start iterating
1060 again. There is a single iterator for each hash, shared by all C<each()>,
1061 C<keys()>, and C<values()> function calls in the program; it can be reset by
1062 reading all the elements from the hash, or by evaluating C<keys HASH> or
1063 C<values HASH>. If you add or delete elements of a hash while you're
1064 iterating over it, you may get entries skipped or duplicated, so don't.
1066 The following prints out your environment like the printenv(1) program,
1067 only in a different order:
1069 while (($key,$value) = each %ENV) {
1070 print "$key=$value\n";
1073 See also C<keys()>, C<values()> and C<sort()>.
1075 =item eof FILEHANDLE
1081 Returns 1 if the next read on FILEHANDLE will return end of file, or if
1082 FILEHANDLE is not open. FILEHANDLE may be an expression whose value
1083 gives the real filehandle. (Note that this function actually
1084 reads a character and then C<ungetc()>s it, so isn't very useful in an
1085 interactive context.) Do not read from a terminal file (or call
1086 C<eof(FILEHANDLE)> on it) after end-of-file is reached. Filetypes such
1087 as terminals may lose the end-of-file condition if you do.
1089 An C<eof> without an argument uses the last file read as argument.
1090 Using C<eof()> with empty parentheses is very different. It indicates the pseudo file formed of
1091 the files listed on the command line, i.e., C<eof()> is reasonable to
1092 use inside a C<while (E<lt>E<gt>)> loop to detect the end of only the
1093 last file. Use C<eof(ARGV)> or eof without the parentheses to test
1094 I<EACH> file in a while (E<lt>E<gt>) loop. Examples:
1096 # reset line numbering on each input file
1098 next if /^\s*#/; # skip comments
1101 close ARGV if eof; # Not eof()!
1104 # insert dashes just before last line of last file
1106 if (eof()) { # check for end of current file
1107 print "--------------\n";
1108 close(ARGV); # close or break; is needed if we
1109 # are reading from the terminal
1114 Practical hint: you almost never need to use C<eof> in Perl, because the
1115 input operators return false values when they run out of data, or if there
1122 In the first form, the return value of EXPR is parsed and executed as if it
1123 were a little Perl program. The value of the expression (which is itself
1124 determined within scalar context) is first parsed, and if there weren't any
1125 errors, executed in the context of the current Perl program, so that any
1126 variable settings or subroutine and format definitions remain afterwards.
1127 Note that the value is parsed every time the eval executes. If EXPR is
1128 omitted, evaluates C<$_>. This form is typically used to delay parsing
1129 and subsequent execution of the text of EXPR until run time.
1131 In the second form, the code within the BLOCK is parsed only once--at the
1132 same time the code surrounding the eval itself was parsed--and executed
1133 within the context of the current Perl program. This form is typically
1134 used to trap exceptions more efficiently than the first (see below), while
1135 also providing the benefit of checking the code within BLOCK at compile
1138 The final semicolon, if any, may be omitted from the value of EXPR or within
1141 In both forms, the value returned is the value of the last expression
1142 evaluated inside the mini-program; a return statement may be also used, just
1143 as with subroutines. The expression providing the return value is evaluated
1144 in void, scalar, or list context, depending on the context of the eval itself.
1145 See L</wantarray> for more on how the evaluation context can be determined.
1147 If there is a syntax error or runtime error, or a C<die()> statement is
1148 executed, an undefined value is returned by C<eval()>, and C<$@> is set to the
1149 error message. If there was no error, C<$@> is guaranteed to be a null
1150 string. Beware that using C<eval()> neither silences perl from printing
1151 warnings to STDERR, nor does it stuff the text of warning messages into C<$@>.
1152 To do either of those, you have to use the C<$SIG{__WARN__}> facility. See
1153 L</warn> and L<perlvar>.
1155 Note that, because C<eval()> traps otherwise-fatal errors, it is useful for
1156 determining whether a particular feature (such as C<socket()> or C<symlink()>)
1157 is implemented. It is also Perl's exception trapping mechanism, where
1158 the die operator is used to raise exceptions.
1160 If the code to be executed doesn't vary, you may use the eval-BLOCK
1161 form to trap run-time errors without incurring the penalty of
1162 recompiling each time. The error, if any, is still returned in C<$@>.
1165 # make divide-by-zero nonfatal
1166 eval { $answer = $a / $b; }; warn $@ if $@;
1168 # same thing, but less efficient
1169 eval '$answer = $a / $b'; warn $@ if $@;
1171 # a compile-time error
1172 eval { $answer = }; # WRONG
1175 eval '$answer ='; # sets $@
1177 When using the C<eval{}> form as an exception trap in libraries, you may
1178 wish not to trigger any C<__DIE__> hooks that user code may have
1179 installed. You can use the C<local $SIG{__DIE__}> construct for this
1180 purpose, as shown in this example:
1182 # a very private exception trap for divide-by-zero
1183 eval { local $SIG{'__DIE__'}; $answer = $a / $b; };
1186 This is especially significant, given that C<__DIE__> hooks can call
1187 C<die()> again, which has the effect of changing their error messages:
1189 # __DIE__ hooks may modify error messages
1191 local $SIG{'__DIE__'} =
1192 sub { (my $x = $_[0]) =~ s/foo/bar/g; die $x };
1193 eval { die "foo lives here" };
1194 print $@ if $@; # prints "bar lives here"
1197 With an C<eval()>, you should be especially careful to remember what's
1198 being looked at when:
1204 eval { $x }; # CASE 4
1206 eval "\$$x++"; # CASE 5
1209 Cases 1 and 2 above behave identically: they run the code contained in
1210 the variable C<$x>. (Although case 2 has misleading double quotes making
1211 the reader wonder what else might be happening (nothing is).) Cases 3
1212 and 4 likewise behave in the same way: they run the code C<'$x'>, which
1213 does nothing but return the value of C<$x>. (Case 4 is preferred for
1214 purely visual reasons, but it also has the advantage of compiling at
1215 compile-time instead of at run-time.) Case 5 is a place where
1216 normally you I<WOULD> like to use double quotes, except that in this
1217 particular situation, you can just use symbolic references instead, as
1220 C<eval BLOCK> does I<not> count as a loop, so the loop control statements
1221 C<next>, C<last> or C<redo> cannot be used to leave or restart the block.
1226 =item exec PROGRAM LIST
1228 The C<exec()> function executes a system command I<AND NEVER RETURNS> -
1229 use C<system()> instead of C<exec()> if you want it to return. It fails and
1230 returns FALSE only if the command does not exist I<and> it is executed
1231 directly instead of via your system's command shell (see below).
1233 Since it's a common mistake to use C<exec()> instead of C<system()>, Perl
1234 warns you if there is a following statement which isn't C<die()>, C<warn()>,
1235 or C<exit()> (if C<-w> is set - but you always do that). If you
1236 I<really> want to follow an C<exec()> with some other statement, you
1237 can use one of these styles to avoid the warning:
1239 exec ('foo') or print STDERR "couldn't exec foo: $!";
1240 { exec ('foo') }; print STDERR "couldn't exec foo: $!";
1242 If there is more than one argument in LIST, or if LIST is an array
1243 with more than one value, calls execvp(3) with the arguments in LIST.
1244 If there is only one scalar argument or an array with one element in it,
1245 the argument is checked for shell metacharacters, and if there are any,
1246 the entire argument is passed to the system's command shell for parsing
1247 (this is C</bin/sh -c> on Unix platforms, but varies on other platforms).
1248 If there are no shell metacharacters in the argument, it is split into
1249 words and passed directly to C<execvp()>, which is more efficient. Note:
1250 C<exec()> and C<system()> do not flush your output buffer, so you may need to
1251 set C<$|> to avoid lost output. Examples:
1253 exec '/bin/echo', 'Your arguments are: ', @ARGV;
1254 exec "sort $outfile | uniq";
1256 If you don't really want to execute the first argument, but want to lie
1257 to the program you are executing about its own name, you can specify
1258 the program you actually want to run as an "indirect object" (without a
1259 comma) in front of the LIST. (This always forces interpretation of the
1260 LIST as a multivalued list, even if there is only a single scalar in
1263 $shell = '/bin/csh';
1264 exec $shell '-sh'; # pretend it's a login shell
1268 exec {'/bin/csh'} '-sh'; # pretend it's a login shell
1270 When the arguments get executed via the system shell, results will
1271 be subject to its quirks and capabilities. See L<perlop/"`STRING`">
1274 Using an indirect object with C<exec()> or C<system()> is also more secure.
1275 This usage forces interpretation of the arguments as a multivalued list,
1276 even if the list had just one argument. That way you're safe from the
1277 shell expanding wildcards or splitting up words with whitespace in them.
1279 @args = ( "echo surprise" );
1281 system @args; # subject to shell escapes
1283 system { $args[0] } @args; # safe even with one-arg list
1285 The first version, the one without the indirect object, ran the I<echo>
1286 program, passing it C<"surprise"> an argument. The second version
1287 didn't--it tried to run a program literally called I<"echo surprise">,
1288 didn't find it, and set C<$?> to a non-zero value indicating failure.
1290 Note that C<exec()> will not call your C<END> blocks, nor will it call
1291 any C<DESTROY> methods in your objects.
1295 Returns TRUE if the specified hash key exists in its hash array, even
1296 if the corresponding value is undefined.
1298 print "Exists\n" if exists $array{$key};
1299 print "Defined\n" if defined $array{$key};
1300 print "True\n" if $array{$key};
1302 A hash element can be TRUE only if it's defined, and defined if
1303 it exists, but the reverse doesn't necessarily hold true.
1305 Note that the EXPR can be arbitrarily complicated as long as the final
1306 operation is a hash key lookup:
1308 if (exists $ref->{"A"}{"B"}{$key}) { ... }
1310 Although the last element will not spring into existence just because its
1311 existence was tested, intervening ones will. Thus C<$ref-E<gt>{"A"}>
1312 C<$ref-E<gt>{"B"}> will spring into existence due to the existence
1313 test for a $key element. This autovivification may be fixed in a later
1318 Evaluates EXPR and exits immediately with that value. (Actually, it
1319 calls any defined C<END> routines first, but the C<END> routines may not
1320 abort the exit. Likewise any object destructors that need to be called
1321 are called before exit.) Example:
1324 exit 0 if $ans =~ /^[Xx]/;
1326 See also C<die()>. If EXPR is omitted, exits with C<0> status. The only
1327 universally portable values for EXPR are C<0> for success and C<1> for error;
1328 all other values are subject to unpredictable interpretation depending
1329 on the environment in which the Perl program is running.
1331 You shouldn't use C<exit()> to abort a subroutine if there's any chance that
1332 someone might want to trap whatever error happened. Use C<die()> instead,
1333 which can be trapped by an C<eval()>.
1335 All C<END{}> blocks are run at exit time. See L<perlsub> for details.
1341 Returns I<e> (the natural logarithm base) to the power of EXPR.
1342 If EXPR is omitted, gives C<exp($_)>.
1344 =item fcntl FILEHANDLE,FUNCTION,SCALAR
1346 Implements the fcntl(2) function. You'll probably have to say
1350 first to get the correct constant definitions. Argument processing and
1351 value return works just like C<ioctl()> below.
1355 fcntl($filehandle, F_GETFL, $packed_return_buffer)
1356 or die "can't fcntl F_GETFL: $!";
1358 You don't have to check for C<defined()> on the return from
1359 C<fnctl()>. Like C<ioctl()>, it maps a C<0> return from the system
1360 call into "C<0> but true" in Perl. This string is true in
1361 boolean context and C<0> in numeric context. It is also
1362 exempt from the normal B<-w> warnings on improper numeric
1365 Note that C<fcntl()> will produce a fatal error if used on a machine that
1366 doesn't implement fcntl(2).
1368 =item fileno FILEHANDLE
1370 Returns the file descriptor for a filehandle. This is useful for
1371 constructing bitmaps for C<select()> and low-level POSIX tty-handling
1372 operations. If FILEHANDLE is an expression, the value is taken as
1373 an indirect filehandle, generally its name.
1375 You can use this to find out whether two handles refer to the
1376 same underlying descriptor:
1378 if (fileno(THIS) == fileno(THAT)) {
1379 print "THIS and THAT are dups\n";
1382 =item flock FILEHANDLE,OPERATION
1384 Calls flock(2), or an emulation of it, on FILEHANDLE. Returns TRUE for
1385 success, FALSE on failure. Produces a fatal error if used on a machine
1386 that doesn't implement flock(2), fcntl(2) locking, or lockf(3). C<flock()>
1387 is Perl's portable file locking interface, although it locks only entire
1390 On many platforms (including most versions or clones of Unix), locks
1391 established by C<flock()> are B<merely advisory>. Such discretionary locks
1392 are more flexible, but offer fewer guarantees. This means that files
1393 locked with C<flock()> may be modified by programs that do not also use
1394 C<flock()>. Windows NT and OS/2 are among the platforms which
1395 enforce mandatory locking. See your local documentation for details.
1397 OPERATION is one of LOCK_SH, LOCK_EX, or LOCK_UN, possibly combined with
1398 LOCK_NB. These constants are traditionally valued 1, 2, 8 and 4, but
1399 you can use the symbolic names if import them from the Fcntl module,
1400 either individually, or as a group using the ':flock' tag. LOCK_SH
1401 requests a shared lock, LOCK_EX requests an exclusive lock, and LOCK_UN
1402 releases a previously requested lock. If LOCK_NB is added to LOCK_SH or
1403 LOCK_EX then C<flock()> will return immediately rather than blocking
1404 waiting for the lock (check the return status to see if you got it).
1406 To avoid the possibility of mis-coordination, Perl flushes FILEHANDLE
1407 before (un)locking it.
1409 Note that the emulation built with lockf(3) doesn't provide shared
1410 locks, and it requires that FILEHANDLE be open with write intent. These
1411 are the semantics that lockf(3) implements. Most (all?) systems
1412 implement lockf(3) in terms of fcntl(2) locking, though, so the
1413 differing semantics shouldn't bite too many people.
1415 Note also that some versions of C<flock()> cannot lock things over the
1416 network; you would need to use the more system-specific C<fcntl()> for
1417 that. If you like you can force Perl to ignore your system's flock(2)
1418 function, and so provide its own fcntl(2)-based emulation, by passing
1419 the switch C<-Ud_flock> to the F<Configure> program when you configure
1422 Here's a mailbox appender for BSD systems.
1424 use Fcntl ':flock'; # import LOCK_* constants
1427 flock(MBOX,LOCK_EX);
1428 # and, in case someone appended
1429 # while we were waiting...
1434 flock(MBOX,LOCK_UN);
1437 open(MBOX, ">>/usr/spool/mail/$ENV{'USER'}")
1438 or die "Can't open mailbox: $!";
1441 print MBOX $msg,"\n\n";
1444 See also L<DB_File> for other flock() examples.
1448 Does a fork(2) system call. Returns the child pid to the parent process,
1449 C<0> to the child process, or C<undef> if the fork is unsuccessful.
1451 Note: unflushed buffers remain unflushed in both processes, which means
1452 you may need to set C<$|> ($AUTOFLUSH in English) or call the C<autoflush()>
1453 method of C<IO::Handle> to avoid duplicate output.
1455 If you C<fork()> without ever waiting on your children, you will accumulate
1458 $SIG{CHLD} = sub { wait };
1460 There's also the double-fork trick (error checking on
1461 C<fork()> returns omitted);
1463 unless ($pid = fork) {
1465 exec "what you really wanna do";
1468 ## (some_perl_code_here)
1475 See also L<perlipc> for more examples of forking and reaping
1478 Note that if your forked child inherits system file descriptors like
1479 STDIN and STDOUT that are actually connected by a pipe or socket, even
1480 if you exit, then the remote server (such as, say, httpd or rsh) won't think
1481 you're done. You should reopen those to F</dev/null> if it's any issue.
1485 Declare a picture format for use by the C<write()> function. For
1489 Test: @<<<<<<<< @||||| @>>>>>
1490 $str, $%, '$' . int($num)
1494 $num = $cost/$quantity;
1498 See L<perlform> for many details and examples.
1500 =item formline PICTURE,LIST
1502 This is an internal function used by C<format>s, though you may call it,
1503 too. It formats (see L<perlform>) a list of values according to the
1504 contents of PICTURE, placing the output into the format output
1505 accumulator, C<$^A> (or C<$ACCUMULATOR> in English).
1506 Eventually, when a C<write()> is done, the contents of
1507 C<$^A> are written to some filehandle, but you could also read C<$^A>
1508 yourself and then set C<$^A> back to C<"">. Note that a format typically
1509 does one C<formline()> per line of form, but the C<formline()> function itself
1510 doesn't care how many newlines are embedded in the PICTURE. This means
1511 that the C<~> and C<~~> tokens will treat the entire PICTURE as a single line.
1512 You may therefore need to use multiple formlines to implement a single
1513 record format, just like the format compiler.
1515 Be careful if you put double quotes around the picture, because an "C<@>"
1516 character may be taken to mean the beginning of an array name.
1517 C<formline()> always returns TRUE. See L<perlform> for other examples.
1519 =item getc FILEHANDLE
1523 Returns the next character from the input file attached to FILEHANDLE,
1524 or the undefined value at end of file, or if there was an error. If
1525 FILEHANDLE is omitted, reads from STDIN. This is not particularly
1526 efficient. It cannot be used to get unbuffered single-characters,
1527 however. For that, try something more like:
1530 system "stty cbreak </dev/tty >/dev/tty 2>&1";
1533 system "stty", '-icanon', 'eol', "\001";
1539 system "stty -cbreak </dev/tty >/dev/tty 2>&1";
1542 system "stty", 'icanon', 'eol', '^@'; # ASCII null
1546 Determination of whether $BSD_STYLE should be set
1547 is left as an exercise to the reader.
1549 The C<POSIX::getattr()> function can do this more portably on systems
1550 purporting POSIX compliance.
1551 See also the C<Term::ReadKey> module from your nearest CPAN site;
1552 details on CPAN can be found on L<perlmodlib/CPAN>.
1556 Implements the C library function of the same name, which on most
1557 systems returns the current login from F</etc/utmp>, if any. If null,
1560 $login = getlogin || getpwuid($<) || "Kilroy";
1562 Do not consider C<getlogin()> for authentication: it is not as
1563 secure as C<getpwuid()>.
1565 =item getpeername SOCKET
1567 Returns the packed sockaddr address of other end of the SOCKET connection.
1570 $hersockaddr = getpeername(SOCK);
1571 ($port, $iaddr) = unpack_sockaddr_in($hersockaddr);
1572 $herhostname = gethostbyaddr($iaddr, AF_INET);
1573 $herstraddr = inet_ntoa($iaddr);
1577 Returns the current process group for the specified PID. Use
1578 a PID of C<0> to get the current process group for the
1579 current process. Will raise an exception if used on a machine that
1580 doesn't implement getpgrp(2). If PID is omitted, returns process
1581 group of current process. Note that the POSIX version of C<getpgrp()>
1582 does not accept a PID argument, so only C<PID==0> is truly portable.
1586 Returns the process id of the parent process.
1588 =item getpriority WHICH,WHO
1590 Returns the current priority for a process, a process group, or a user.
1591 (See L<getpriority(2)>.) Will raise a fatal exception if used on a
1592 machine that doesn't implement getpriority(2).
1598 =item gethostbyname NAME
1600 =item getnetbyname NAME
1602 =item getprotobyname NAME
1608 =item getservbyname NAME,PROTO
1610 =item gethostbyaddr ADDR,ADDRTYPE
1612 =item getnetbyaddr ADDR,ADDRTYPE
1614 =item getprotobynumber NUMBER
1616 =item getservbyport PORT,PROTO
1634 =item sethostent STAYOPEN
1636 =item setnetent STAYOPEN
1638 =item setprotoent STAYOPEN
1640 =item setservent STAYOPEN
1654 These routines perform the same functions as their counterparts in the
1655 system library. In list context, the return values from the
1656 various get routines are as follows:
1658 ($name,$passwd,$uid,$gid,
1659 $quota,$comment,$gcos,$dir,$shell,$expire) = getpw*
1660 ($name,$passwd,$gid,$members) = getgr*
1661 ($name,$aliases,$addrtype,$length,@addrs) = gethost*
1662 ($name,$aliases,$addrtype,$net) = getnet*
1663 ($name,$aliases,$proto) = getproto*
1664 ($name,$aliases,$port,$proto) = getserv*
1666 (If the entry doesn't exist you get a null list.)
1668 In scalar context, you get the name, unless the function was a
1669 lookup by name, in which case you get the other thing, whatever it is.
1670 (If the entry doesn't exist you get the undefined value.) For example:
1672 $uid = getpwnam($name);
1673 $name = getpwuid($num);
1675 $gid = getgrnam($name);
1676 $name = getgrgid($num;
1680 In I<getpw*()> the fields C<$quota>, C<$comment>, and C<$expire> are special
1681 cases in the sense that in many systems they are unsupported. If the
1682 C<$quota> is unsupported, it is an empty scalar. If it is supported, it
1683 usually encodes the disk quota. If the C<$comment> field is unsupported,
1684 it is an empty scalar. If it is supported it usually encodes some
1685 administrative comment about the user. In some systems the $quota
1686 field may be C<$change> or C<$age>, fields that have to do with password
1687 aging. In some systems the C<$comment> field may be C<$class>. The C<$expire>
1688 field, if present, encodes the expiration period of the account or the
1689 password. For the availability and the exact meaning of these fields
1690 in your system, please consult your getpwnam(3) documentation and your
1691 F<pwd.h> file. You can also find out from within Perl which meaning
1692 your C<$quota> and C<$comment> fields have and whether you have the C<$expire>
1693 field by using the C<Config> module and the values C<d_pwquota>, C<d_pwage>,
1694 C<d_pwchange>, C<d_pwcomment>, and C<d_pwexpire>.
1696 The C<$members> value returned by I<getgr*()> is a space separated list of
1697 the login names of the members of the group.
1699 For the I<gethost*()> functions, if the C<h_errno> variable is supported in
1700 C, it will be returned to you via C<$?> if the function call fails. The
1701 C<@addrs> value returned by a successful call is a list of the raw
1702 addresses returned by the corresponding system library call. In the
1703 Internet domain, each address is four bytes long and you can unpack it
1704 by saying something like:
1706 ($a,$b,$c,$d) = unpack('C4',$addr[0]);
1708 If you get tired of remembering which element of the return list contains
1709 which return value, by-name interfaces are also provided in modules:
1710 C<File::stat>, C<Net::hostent>, C<Net::netent>, C<Net::protoent>, C<Net::servent>,
1711 C<Time::gmtime>, C<Time::localtime>, and C<User::grent>. These override the
1712 normal built-in, replacing them with versions that return objects with
1713 the appropriate names for each field. For example:
1717 $is_his = (stat($filename)->uid == pwent($whoever)->uid);
1719 Even though it looks like they're the same method calls (uid),
1720 they aren't, because a C<File::stat> object is different from a C<User::pwent> object.
1722 =item getsockname SOCKET
1724 Returns the packed sockaddr address of this end of the SOCKET connection.
1727 $mysockaddr = getsockname(SOCK);
1728 ($port, $myaddr) = unpack_sockaddr_in($mysockaddr);
1730 =item getsockopt SOCKET,LEVEL,OPTNAME
1732 Returns the socket option requested, or undef if there is an error.
1738 Returns the value of EXPR with filename expansions such as the standard Unix shell F</bin/sh> would
1739 do. This is the internal function implementing the C<E<lt>*.cE<gt>>
1740 operator, but you can use it directly. If EXPR is omitted, C<$_> is used.
1741 The C<E<lt>*.cE<gt>> operator is discussed in more detail in
1742 L<perlop/"I/O Operators">.
1746 Converts a time as returned by the time function to a 9-element array
1747 with the time localized for the standard Greenwich time zone.
1748 Typically used as follows:
1751 ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) =
1754 All array elements are numeric, and come straight out of a struct tm.
1755 In particular this means that C<$mon> has the range C<0..11> and C<$wday> has
1756 the range C<0..6> with sunday as day C<0>. Also, C<$year> is the number of
1757 years since 1900, that is, C<$year> is C<123> in year 2023, I<not> simply the last two digits of the year.
1759 If EXPR is omitted, does C<gmtime(time())>.
1761 In scalar context, returns the ctime(3) value:
1763 $now_string = gmtime; # e.g., "Thu Oct 13 04:54:34 1994"
1765 Also see the C<timegm()> function provided by the C<Time::Local> module,
1766 and the strftime(3) function available via the POSIX module.
1768 This scalar value is B<not> locale dependent, see L<perllocale>, but
1769 instead a Perl builtin. Also see the C<Time::Local> module, and the
1770 strftime(3) and mktime(3) function available via the POSIX module. To
1771 get somewhat similar but locale dependent date strings, set up your
1772 locale environment variables appropriately (please see L<perllocale>)
1773 and try for example:
1775 use POSIX qw(strftime);
1776 $now_string = strftime "%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Y", gmtime;
1778 Note that the C<%a> and C<%b>, the short forms of the day of the week
1779 and the month of the year, may not necessarily be three characters wide.
1787 The C<goto-LABEL> form finds the statement labeled with LABEL and resumes
1788 execution there. It may not be used to go into any construct that
1789 requires initialization, such as a subroutine or a C<foreach> loop. It
1790 also can't be used to go into a construct that is optimized away,
1791 or to get out of a block or subroutine given to C<sort()>.
1792 It can be used to go almost anywhere else within the dynamic scope,
1793 including out of subroutines, but it's usually better to use some other
1794 construct such as C<last> or C<die()>. The author of Perl has never felt the
1795 need to use this form of C<goto> (in Perl, that is--C is another matter).
1797 The C<goto-EXPR> form expects a label name, whose scope will be resolved
1798 dynamically. This allows for computed C<goto>s per FORTRAN, but isn't
1799 necessarily recommended if you're optimizing for maintainability:
1801 goto ("FOO", "BAR", "GLARCH")[$i];
1803 The C<goto-&NAME> form is highly magical, and substitutes a call to the
1804 named subroutine for the currently running subroutine. This is used by
1805 C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines that wish to load another subroutine and then
1806 pretend that the other subroutine had been called in the first place
1807 (except that any modifications to C<@_> in the current subroutine are
1808 propagated to the other subroutine.) After the C<goto>, not even C<caller()>
1809 will be able to tell that this routine was called first.
1811 =item grep BLOCK LIST
1813 =item grep EXPR,LIST
1815 This is similar in spirit to, but not the same as, grep(1)
1816 and its relatives. In particular, it is not limited to using
1817 regular expressions.
1819 Evaluates the BLOCK or EXPR for each element of LIST (locally setting
1820 C<$_> to each element) and returns the list value consisting of those
1821 elements for which the expression evaluated to TRUE. In a scalar
1822 context, returns the number of times the expression was TRUE.
1824 @foo = grep(!/^#/, @bar); # weed out comments
1828 @foo = grep {!/^#/} @bar; # weed out comments
1830 Note that, because C<$_> is a reference into the list value, it can be used
1831 to modify the elements of the array. While this is useful and
1832 supported, it can cause bizarre results if the LIST is not a named
1833 array. Similarly, grep returns aliases into the original list,
1834 much like the way that a for loop's index variable aliases the list
1835 elements. That is, modifying an element of a list returned by grep
1836 (for example, in a C<foreach>, C<map()> or another C<grep()>)
1837 actually modifies the element in the original list.
1839 See also L</map> for an array composed of the results of the BLOCK or EXPR.
1845 Interprets EXPR as a hex string and returns the corresponding
1846 value. (To convert strings that might start with either 0 or 0x
1847 see L</oct>.) If EXPR is omitted, uses C<$_>.
1849 print hex '0xAf'; # prints '175'
1850 print hex 'aF'; # same
1854 There is no builtin C<import()> function. It is just an ordinary
1855 method (subroutine) defined (or inherited) by modules that wish to export
1856 names to another module. The C<use()> function calls the C<import()> method
1857 for the package used. See also L</use()>, L<perlmod>, and L<Exporter>.
1859 =item index STR,SUBSTR,POSITION
1861 =item index STR,SUBSTR
1863 Returns the position of the first occurrence of SUBSTR in STR at or after
1864 POSITION. If POSITION is omitted, starts searching from the beginning of
1865 the string. The return value is based at C<0> (or whatever you've set the C<$[>
1866 variable to--but don't do that). If the substring is not found, returns
1867 one less than the base, ordinarily C<-1>.
1873 Returns the integer portion of EXPR. If EXPR is omitted, uses C<$_>.
1874 You should not use this for rounding, because it truncates
1875 towards C<0>, and because machine representations of floating point
1876 numbers can sometimes produce counterintuitive results. Usually C<sprintf()> or C<printf()>,
1877 or the C<POSIX::floor> or C<POSIX::ceil> functions, would serve you better.
1879 =item ioctl FILEHANDLE,FUNCTION,SCALAR
1881 Implements the ioctl(2) function. You'll probably have to say
1883 require "ioctl.ph"; # probably in /usr/local/lib/perl/ioctl.ph
1885 first to get the correct function definitions. If F<ioctl.ph> doesn't
1886 exist or doesn't have the correct definitions you'll have to roll your
1887 own, based on your C header files such as F<E<lt>sys/ioctl.hE<gt>>.
1888 (There is a Perl script called B<h2ph> that comes with the Perl kit that
1889 may help you in this, but it's nontrivial.) SCALAR will be read and/or
1890 written depending on the FUNCTION--a pointer to the string value of SCALAR
1891 will be passed as the third argument of the actual C<ioctl()> call. (If SCALAR
1892 has no string value but does have a numeric value, that value will be
1893 passed rather than a pointer to the string value. To guarantee this to be
1894 TRUE, add a C<0> to the scalar before using it.) The C<pack()> and C<unpack()>
1895 functions are useful for manipulating the values of structures used by
1896 C<ioctl()>. The following example sets the erase character to DEL.
1900 die "NO TIOCGETP" if $@ || !$getp;
1901 $sgttyb_t = "ccccs"; # 4 chars and a short
1902 if (ioctl(STDIN,$getp,$sgttyb)) {
1903 @ary = unpack($sgttyb_t,$sgttyb);
1905 $sgttyb = pack($sgttyb_t,@ary);
1906 ioctl(STDIN,&TIOCSETP,$sgttyb)
1907 || die "Can't ioctl: $!";
1910 The return value of C<ioctl()> (and C<fcntl()>) is as follows:
1912 if OS returns: then Perl returns:
1914 0 string "0 but true"
1915 anything else that number
1917 Thus Perl returns TRUE on success and FALSE on failure, yet you can
1918 still easily determine the actual value returned by the operating
1921 ($retval = ioctl(...)) || ($retval = -1);
1922 printf "System returned %d\n", $retval;
1924 The special string "C<0> but true" is excempt from B<-w> complaints
1925 about improper numeric conversions.
1927 =item join EXPR,LIST
1929 Joins the separate strings of LIST into a single string with
1930 fields separated by the value of EXPR, and returns the string.
1933 $_ = join(':', $login,$passwd,$uid,$gid,$gcos,$home,$shell);
1939 Returns a list consisting of all the keys of the named hash. (In a
1940 scalar context, returns the number of keys.) The keys are returned in
1941 an apparently random order. The actual random order is subject to
1942 change in future versions of perl, but it is guaranteed to be the same
1943 order as either the C<values()> or C<each()> function produces (given
1944 that the hash has not been modified). As a side effect, it resets
1947 Here is yet another way to print your environment:
1950 @values = values %ENV;
1951 while ($#keys >= 0) {
1952 print pop(@keys), '=', pop(@values), "\n";
1955 or how about sorted by key:
1957 foreach $key (sort(keys %ENV)) {
1958 print $key, '=', $ENV{$key}, "\n";
1961 To sort a hash by value, you'll need to use a C<sort()> function.
1962 Here's a descending numeric sort of a hash by its values:
1964 foreach $key (sort { $hash{$b} <=> $hash{$a} } keys %hash) {
1965 printf "%4d %s\n", $hash{$key}, $key;
1968 As an lvalue C<keys()> allows you to increase the number of hash buckets
1969 allocated for the given hash. This can gain you a measure of efficiency if
1970 you know the hash is going to get big. (This is similar to pre-extending
1971 an array by assigning a larger number to $#array.) If you say
1975 then C<%hash> will have at least 200 buckets allocated for it--256 of them,
1976 in fact, since it rounds up to the next power of two. These
1977 buckets will be retained even if you do C<%hash = ()>, use C<undef
1978 %hash> if you want to free the storage while C<%hash> is still in scope.
1979 You can't shrink the number of buckets allocated for the hash using
1980 C<keys()> in this way (but you needn't worry about doing this by accident,
1981 as trying has no effect).
1983 See also C<each()>, C<values()> and C<sort()>.
1987 Sends a signal to a list of processes. The first element of
1988 the list must be the signal to send. Returns the number of
1989 processes successfully signaled.
1991 $cnt = kill 1, $child1, $child2;
1994 Unlike in the shell, in Perl if the I<SIGNAL> is negative, it kills
1995 process groups instead of processes. (On System V, a negative I<PROCESS>
1996 number will also kill process groups, but that's not portable.) That
1997 means you usually want to use positive not negative signals. You may also
1998 use a signal name in quotes. See L<perlipc/"Signals"> for details.
2004 The C<last> command is like the C<break> statement in C (as used in
2005 loops); it immediately exits the loop in question. If the LABEL is
2006 omitted, the command refers to the innermost enclosing loop. The
2007 C<continue> block, if any, is not executed:
2009 LINE: while (<STDIN>) {
2010 last LINE if /^$/; # exit when done with header
2014 C<last> cannot be used to exit a block which returns a value such as
2015 C<eval {}>, C<sub {}> or C<do {}>.
2017 See also L</continue> for an illustration of how C<last>, C<next>, and
2024 Returns an lowercased version of EXPR. This is the internal function
2025 implementing the C<\L> escape in double-quoted strings.
2026 Respects current LC_CTYPE locale if C<use locale> in force. See L<perllocale>.
2028 If EXPR is omitted, uses C<$_>.
2034 Returns the value of EXPR with the first character lowercased. This is
2035 the internal function implementing the C<\l> escape in double-quoted strings.
2036 Respects current LC_CTYPE locale if C<use locale> in force. See L<perllocale>.
2038 If EXPR is omitted, uses C<$_>.
2044 Returns the length in characters of the value of EXPR. If EXPR is
2045 omitted, returns length of C<$_>.
2047 =item link OLDFILE,NEWFILE
2049 Creates a new filename linked to the old filename. Returns TRUE for
2050 success, FALSE otherwise.
2052 =item listen SOCKET,QUEUESIZE
2054 Does the same thing that the listen system call does. Returns TRUE if
2055 it succeeded, FALSE otherwise. See example in L<perlipc/"Sockets: Client/Server Communication">.
2059 A local modifies the listed variables to be local to the enclosing
2060 block, file, or eval. If more than one value is listed, the list must
2061 be placed in parentheses. See L<perlsub/"Temporary Values via local()">
2062 for details, including issues with tied arrays and hashes.
2064 You really probably want to be using C<my()> instead, because C<local()> isn't
2065 what most people think of as "local". See L<perlsub/"Private Variables
2066 via my()"> for details.
2068 =item localtime EXPR
2070 Converts a time as returned by the time function to a 9-element array
2071 with the time analyzed for the local time zone. Typically used as
2075 ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) =
2078 All array elements are numeric, and come straight out of a struct tm.
2079 In particular this means that C<$mon> has the range C<0..11> and C<$wday> has
2080 the range C<0..6> with sunday as day C<0>. Also, C<$year> is the number of
2081 years since 1900, that is, C<$year> is C<123> in year 2023, and I<not> simply the last two digits of the year.
2083 If EXPR is omitted, uses the current time (C<localtime(time)>).
2085 In scalar context, returns the ctime(3) value:
2087 $now_string = localtime; # e.g., "Thu Oct 13 04:54:34 1994"
2089 This scalar value is B<not> locale dependent, see L<perllocale>, but
2090 instead a Perl builtin. Also see the C<Time::Local> module, and the
2091 strftime(3) and mktime(3) function available via the POSIX module. To
2092 get somewhat similar but locale dependent date strings, set up your
2093 locale environment variables appropriately (please see L<perllocale>)
2094 and try for example:
2096 use POSIX qw(strftime);
2097 $now_string = strftime "%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Y", localtime;
2099 Note that the C<%a> and C<%b>, the short forms of the day of the week
2100 and the month of the year, may not necessarily be three characters wide.
2106 Returns the natural logarithm (base I<e>) of EXPR. If EXPR is omitted, returns log
2109 =item lstat FILEHANDLE
2115 Does the same thing as the C<stat()> function (including setting the
2116 special C<_> filehandle) but stats a symbolic link instead of the file
2117 the symbolic link points to. If symbolic links are unimplemented on
2118 your system, a normal C<stat()> is done.
2120 If EXPR is omitted, stats C<$_>.
2124 The match operator. See L<perlop>.
2126 =item map BLOCK LIST
2130 Evaluates the BLOCK or EXPR for each element of LIST (locally setting C<$_> to each
2131 element) and returns the list value composed of the results of each such
2132 evaluation. Evaluates BLOCK or EXPR in a list context, so each element of LIST
2133 may produce zero, one, or more elements in the returned value.
2135 @chars = map(chr, @nums);
2137 translates a list of numbers to the corresponding characters. And
2139 %hash = map { getkey($_) => $_ } @array;
2141 is just a funny way to write
2144 foreach $_ (@array) {
2145 $hash{getkey($_)} = $_;
2148 Note that, because C<$_> is a reference into the list value, it can be used
2149 to modify the elements of the array. While this is useful and
2150 supported, it can cause bizarre results if the LIST is not a named
2151 array. See also L</grep> for an array composed of those items of the
2152 original list for which the BLOCK or EXPR evaluates to true.
2154 =item mkdir FILENAME,MODE
2156 Creates the directory specified by FILENAME, with permissions
2157 specified by MODE (as modified by C<umask>). If it succeeds it
2158 returns TRUE, otherwise it returns FALSE and sets C<$!> (errno).
2160 In general, it is better to create directories with permissive MODEs,
2161 and let the user modify that with their C<umask>, than it is to supply
2162 a restrictive MODE and give the user no way to be more permissive.
2163 The exceptions to this rule are when the file or directory should be
2164 kept private (mail files, for instance). The perlfunc(1) entry on
2165 C<umask> discusses the choice of MODE in more detail.
2167 =item msgctl ID,CMD,ARG
2169 Calls the System V IPC function msgctl(2). You'll probably have to say
2173 first to get the correct constant definitions. If CMD is C<IPC_STAT>,
2174 then ARG must be a variable which will hold the returned C<msqid_ds>
2175 structure. Returns like C<ioctl()>: the undefined value for error, "C<0> but
2176 true" for zero, or the actual return value otherwise. See also
2177 C<IPC::SysV> and C<IPC::Semaphore::Msg> documentation.
2179 =item msgget KEY,FLAGS
2181 Calls the System V IPC function msgget(2). Returns the message queue
2182 id, or the undefined value if there is an error. See also C<IPC::SysV>
2183 and C<IPC::SysV::Msg> documentation.
2185 =item msgsnd ID,MSG,FLAGS
2187 Calls the System V IPC function msgsnd to send the message MSG to the
2188 message queue ID. MSG must begin with the long integer message type,
2189 which may be created with C<pack("l", $type)>. Returns TRUE if
2190 successful, or FALSE if there is an error. See also C<IPC::SysV>
2191 and C<IPC::SysV::Msg> documentation.
2193 =item msgrcv ID,VAR,SIZE,TYPE,FLAGS
2195 Calls the System V IPC function msgrcv to receive a message from
2196 message queue ID into variable VAR with a maximum message size of
2197 SIZE. Note that if a message is received, the message type will be
2198 the first thing in VAR, and the maximum length of VAR is SIZE plus the
2199 size of the message type. Returns TRUE if successful, or FALSE if
2200 there is an error. See also C<IPC::SysV> and C<IPC::SysV::Msg> documentation.
2204 A C<my()> declares the listed variables to be local (lexically) to the
2205 enclosing block, file, or C<eval()>. If
2206 more than one value is listed, the list must be placed in parentheses. See
2207 L<perlsub/"Private Variables via my()"> for details.
2213 The C<next> command is like the C<continue> statement in C; it starts
2214 the next iteration of the loop:
2216 LINE: while (<STDIN>) {
2217 next LINE if /^#/; # discard comments
2221 Note that if there were a C<continue> block on the above, it would get
2222 executed even on discarded lines. If the LABEL is omitted, the command
2223 refers to the innermost enclosing loop.
2225 C<next> cannot be used to exit a block which returns a value such as
2226 C<eval {}>, C<sub {}> or C<do {}>.
2228 See also L</continue> for an illustration of how C<last>, C<next>, and
2231 =item no Module LIST
2233 See the L</use> function, which C<no> is the opposite of.
2239 Interprets EXPR as an octal string and returns the corresponding
2240 value. (If EXPR happens to start off with C<0x>, interprets it as a
2241 hex string. If EXPR starts off with C<0b>, it is interpreted as a
2242 binary string.) The following will handle decimal, binary, octal, and
2243 hex in the standard Perl or C notation:
2245 $val = oct($val) if $val =~ /^0/;
2247 If EXPR is omitted, uses C<$_>. This function is commonly used when
2248 a string such as C<644> needs to be converted into a file mode, for
2249 example. (Although perl will automatically convert strings into
2250 numbers as needed, this automatic conversion assumes base 10.)
2252 =item open FILEHANDLE,EXPR
2254 =item open FILEHANDLE
2256 Opens the file whose filename is given by EXPR, and associates it with
2257 FILEHANDLE. If FILEHANDLE is an expression, its value is used as the
2258 name of the real filehandle wanted. If EXPR is omitted, the scalar
2259 variable of the same name as the FILEHANDLE contains the filename.
2260 (Note that lexical variables--those declared with C<my()>--will not work
2261 for this purpose; so if you're using C<my()>, specify EXPR in your call
2264 If the filename begins with C<'E<lt>'> or nothing, the file is opened for input.
2265 If the filename begins with C<'E<gt>'>, the file is truncated and opened for
2266 output, being created if necessary. If the filename begins with C<'E<gt>E<gt>'>,
2267 the file is opened for appending, again being created if necessary.
2268 You can put a C<'+'> in front of the C<'E<gt>'> or C<'E<lt>'> to indicate that
2269 you want both read and write access to the file; thus C<'+E<lt>'> is almost
2270 always preferred for read/write updates--the C<'+E<gt>'> mode would clobber the
2271 file first. You can't usually use either read-write mode for updating
2272 textfiles, since they have variable length records. See the B<-i>
2273 switch in L<perlrun> for a better approach. The file is created with
2274 permissions of C<0666> modified by the process' C<umask> value.
2276 The prefix and the filename may be separated with spaces.
2277 These various prefixes correspond to the fopen(3) modes of C<'r'>, C<'r+'>, C<'w'>,
2278 C<'w+'>, C<'a'>, and C<'a+'>.
2280 If the filename begins with C<'|'>, the filename is interpreted as a
2281 command to which output is to be piped, and if the filename ends with a
2282 C<'|'>, the filename is interpreted as a command which pipes output to
2283 us. See L<perlipc/"Using open() for IPC">
2284 for more examples of this. (You are not allowed to C<open()> to a command
2285 that pipes both in I<and> out, but see L<IPC::Open2>, L<IPC::Open3>,
2286 and L<perlipc/"Bidirectional Communication"> for alternatives.)
2288 Opening C<'-'> opens STDIN and opening C<'E<gt>-'> opens STDOUT. Open returns
2289 nonzero upon success, the undefined value otherwise. If the C<open()>
2290 involved a pipe, the return value happens to be the pid of the
2293 If you're unfortunate enough to be running Perl on a system that
2294 distinguishes between text files and binary files (modern operating
2295 systems don't care), then you should check out L</binmode> for tips for
2296 dealing with this. The key distinction between systems that need C<binmode()>
2297 and those that don't is their text file formats. Systems like Unix, MacOS, and
2298 Plan9, which delimit lines with a single character, and which encode that
2299 character in C as C<"\n">, do not need C<binmode()>. The rest need it.
2301 When opening a file, it's usually a bad idea to continue normal execution
2302 if the request failed, so C<open()> is frequently used in connection with
2303 C<die()>. Even if C<die()> won't do what you want (say, in a CGI script,
2304 where you want to make a nicely formatted error message (but there are
2305 modules that can help with that problem)) you should always check
2306 the return value from opening a file. The infrequent exception is when
2307 working with an unopened filehandle is actually what you want to do.
2312 open ARTICLE or die "Can't find article $ARTICLE: $!\n";
2313 while (<ARTICLE>) {...
2315 open(LOG, '>>/usr/spool/news/twitlog'); # (log is reserved)
2316 # if the open fails, output is discarded
2318 open(DBASE, '+<dbase.mine') # open for update
2319 or die "Can't open 'dbase.mine' for update: $!";
2321 open(ARTICLE, "caesar <$article |") # decrypt article
2322 or die "Can't start caesar: $!";
2324 open(EXTRACT, "|sort >/tmp/Tmp$$") # $$ is our process id
2325 or die "Can't start sort: $!";
2327 # process argument list of files along with any includes
2329 foreach $file (@ARGV) {
2330 process($file, 'fh00');
2334 my($filename, $input) = @_;
2335 $input++; # this is a string increment
2336 unless (open($input, $filename)) {
2337 print STDERR "Can't open $filename: $!\n";
2342 while (<$input>) { # note use of indirection
2343 if (/^#include "(.*)"/) {
2344 process($1, $input);
2351 You may also, in the Bourne shell tradition, specify an EXPR beginning
2352 with C<'E<gt>&'>, in which case the rest of the string is interpreted as the
2353 name of a filehandle (or file descriptor, if numeric) to be
2354 duped and opened. You may use C<&> after C<E<gt>>, C<E<gt>E<gt>>, C<E<lt>>, C<+E<gt>>,
2355 C<+E<gt>E<gt>>, and C<+E<lt>>. The
2356 mode you specify should match the mode of the original filehandle.
2357 (Duping a filehandle does not take into account any existing contents of
2359 Here is a script that saves, redirects, and restores STDOUT and
2363 open(OLDOUT, ">&STDOUT");
2364 open(OLDERR, ">&STDERR");
2366 open(STDOUT, ">foo.out") || die "Can't redirect stdout";
2367 open(STDERR, ">&STDOUT") || die "Can't dup stdout";
2369 select(STDERR); $| = 1; # make unbuffered
2370 select(STDOUT); $| = 1; # make unbuffered
2372 print STDOUT "stdout 1\n"; # this works for
2373 print STDERR "stderr 1\n"; # subprocesses too
2378 open(STDOUT, ">&OLDOUT");
2379 open(STDERR, ">&OLDERR");
2381 print STDOUT "stdout 2\n";
2382 print STDERR "stderr 2\n";
2385 If you specify C<'E<lt>&=N'>, where C<N> is a number, then Perl will do an
2386 equivalent of C's C<fdopen()> of that file descriptor; this is more
2387 parsimonious of file descriptors. For example:
2389 open(FILEHANDLE, "<&=$fd")
2391 If you open a pipe on the command C<'-'>, i.e., either C<'|-'> or C<'-|'>, then
2392 there is an implicit fork done, and the return value of open is the pid
2393 of the child within the parent process, and C<0> within the child
2394 process. (Use C<defined($pid)> to determine whether the open was successful.)
2395 The filehandle behaves normally for the parent, but i/o to that
2396 filehandle is piped from/to the STDOUT/STDIN of the child process.
2397 In the child process the filehandle isn't opened--i/o happens from/to
2398 the new STDOUT or STDIN. Typically this is used like the normal
2399 piped open when you want to exercise more control over just how the
2400 pipe command gets executed, such as when you are running setuid, and
2401 don't want to have to scan shell commands for metacharacters.
2402 The following pairs are more or less equivalent:
2404 open(FOO, "|tr '[a-z]' '[A-Z]'");
2405 open(FOO, "|-") || exec 'tr', '[a-z]', '[A-Z]';
2407 open(FOO, "cat -n '$file'|");
2408 open(FOO, "-|") || exec 'cat', '-n', $file;
2410 See L<perlipc/"Safe Pipe Opens"> for more examples of this.
2412 NOTE: On any operation that may do a fork, any unflushed buffers remain
2413 unflushed in both processes, which means you may need to set C<$|> to
2414 avoid duplicate output. On systems that support a close-on-exec flag on
2415 files, the flag will be set for the newly opened file descriptor as
2416 determined by the value of $^F. See L<perlvar/$^F>.
2418 Closing any piped filehandle causes the parent process to wait for the
2419 child to finish, and returns the status value in C<$?>.
2421 The filename passed to open will have leading and trailing
2422 whitespace deleted, and the normal redirection characters
2423 honored. This property, known as "magic open",
2424 can often be used to good effect. A user could specify a filename of
2425 F<"rsh cat file |">, or you could change certain filenames as needed:
2427 $filename =~ s/(.*\.gz)\s*$/gzip -dc < $1|/;
2428 open(FH, $filename) or die "Can't open $filename: $!";
2430 However, to open a file with arbitrary weird characters in it, it's
2431 necessary to protect any leading and trailing whitespace:
2433 $file =~ s#^(\s)#./$1#;
2434 open(FOO, "< $file\0");
2436 If you want a "real" C C<open()> (see L<open(2)> on your system), then you
2437 should use the C<sysopen()> function, which involves no such magic. This is
2438 another way to protect your filenames from interpretation. For example:
2441 sysopen(HANDLE, $path, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_EXCL)
2442 or die "sysopen $path: $!";
2443 $oldfh = select(HANDLE); $| = 1; select($oldfh);
2444 print HANDLE "stuff $$\n");
2446 print "File contains: ", <HANDLE>;
2448 Using the constructor from the C<IO::Handle> package (or one of its
2449 subclasses, such as C<IO::File> or C<IO::Socket>), you can generate anonymous
2450 filehandles that have the scope of whatever variables hold references to
2451 them, and automatically close whenever and however you leave that scope:
2455 sub read_myfile_munged {
2457 my $handle = new IO::File;
2458 open($handle, "myfile") or die "myfile: $!";
2460 or return (); # Automatically closed here.
2461 mung $first or die "mung failed"; # Or here.
2462 return $first, <$handle> if $ALL; # Or here.
2466 See L</seek> for some details about mixing reading and writing.
2468 =item opendir DIRHANDLE,EXPR
2470 Opens a directory named EXPR for processing by C<readdir()>, C<telldir()>,
2471 C<seekdir()>, C<rewinddir()>, and C<closedir()>. Returns TRUE if successful.
2472 DIRHANDLEs have their own namespace separate from FILEHANDLEs.
2478 Returns the numeric (ASCII or Unicode) value of the first character of EXPR. If
2479 EXPR is omitted, uses C<$_>. For the reverse, see L</chr>.
2481 =item pack TEMPLATE,LIST
2483 Takes an array or list of values and packs it into a binary structure,
2484 returning the string containing the structure. The TEMPLATE is a
2485 sequence of characters that give the order and type of values, as
2488 a A string with arbitrary binary data, will be null padded.
2489 A An ascii string, will be space padded.
2490 Z A null terminated (asciz) string, will be null padded.
2492 b A bit string (ascending bit order, like vec()).
2493 B A bit string (descending bit order).
2494 h A hex string (low nybble first).
2495 H A hex string (high nybble first).
2497 c A signed char value.
2498 C An unsigned char value. Only does bytes. See U for Unicode.
2500 s A signed short value.
2501 S An unsigned short value.
2502 (This 'short' is _exactly_ 16 bits, which may differ from
2503 what a local C compiler calls 'short'.)
2505 i A signed integer value.
2506 I An unsigned integer value.
2507 (This 'integer' is _at_least_ 32 bits wide. Its exact
2508 size depends on what a local C compiler calls 'int',
2509 and may even be larger than the 'long' described in
2512 l A signed long value.
2513 L An unsigned long value.
2514 (This 'long' is _exactly_ 32 bits, which may differ from
2515 what a local C compiler calls 'long'.)
2517 n A short in "network" (big-endian) order.
2518 N A long in "network" (big-endian) order.
2519 v A short in "VAX" (little-endian) order.
2520 V A long in "VAX" (little-endian) order.
2521 (These 'shorts' and 'longs' are _exactly_ 16 bits and
2522 _exactly_ 32 bits, respectively.)
2524 q A signed quad (64-bit) value.
2525 Q An unsigned quad value.
2526 (Available only if your system supports 64-bit integer values
2527 _and_ if Perl has been compiled to support those.
2528 Causes a fatal error otherwise.)
2530 f A single-precision float in the native format.
2531 d A double-precision float in the native format.
2533 p A pointer to a null-terminated string.
2534 P A pointer to a structure (fixed-length string).
2536 u A uuencoded string.
2537 U A Unicode character number. Encodes to UTF-8 internally.
2538 Works even if C<use utf8> is not in effect.
2540 w A BER compressed integer. Its bytes represent an unsigned
2541 integer in base 128, most significant digit first, with as
2542 few digits as possible. Bit eight (the high bit) is set
2543 on each byte except the last.
2547 @ Null fill to absolute position.
2549 The following rules apply:
2555 Each letter may optionally be followed by a number giving a repeat
2556 count. With all types except C<"a">, C<"A">, C<"Z">, C<"b">, C<"B">, C<"h">,
2557 C<"H">, and C<"P"> the pack function will gobble up that many values from
2558 the LIST. A C<*> for the repeat count means to use however many items are
2563 The C<"a">, C<"A"> and C<"Z"> types gobble just one value, but pack it as a
2564 string of length count, padding with nulls or spaces as necessary. When
2565 unpacking, C<"A"> strips trailing spaces and nulls, C<"Z"> strips everything
2566 after the first null, and C<"a"> returns data verbatim.
2570 Likewise, the C<"b"> and C<"B"> fields pack a string that many bits long.
2574 The C<"h"> and C<"H"> fields pack a string that many nybbles long.
2578 The C<"p"> type packs a pointer to a null-terminated string. You are
2579 responsible for ensuring the string is not a temporary value (which can
2580 potentially get deallocated before you get around to using the packed result).
2581 The C<"P"> type packs a pointer to a structure of the size indicated by the
2582 length. A NULL pointer is created if the corresponding value for C<"p"> or
2587 Real numbers (floats and doubles) are in the native machine format only;
2588 due to the multiplicity of floating formats around, and the lack of a
2589 standard "network" representation, no facility for interchange has been
2590 made. This means that packed floating point data written on one machine
2591 may not be readable on another - even if both use IEEE floating point
2592 arithmetic (as the endian-ness of the memory representation is not part
2595 Note that Perl uses doubles internally for all numeric calculation, and
2596 converting from double into float and thence back to double again will
2597 lose precision (i.e., C<unpack("f", pack("f", $foo)>) will not in general
2604 $foo = pack("CCCC",65,66,67,68);
2606 $foo = pack("C4",65,66,67,68);
2608 $foo = pack("U4",0x24b6,0x24b7,0x24b8,0x24b9);
2609 # same thing with Unicode circled letters
2611 $foo = pack("ccxxcc",65,66,67,68);
2614 $foo = pack("s2",1,2);
2615 # "\1\0\2\0" on little-endian
2616 # "\0\1\0\2" on big-endian
2618 $foo = pack("a4","abcd","x","y","z");
2621 $foo = pack("aaaa","abcd","x","y","z");
2624 $foo = pack("a14","abcdefg");
2625 # "abcdefg\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"
2627 $foo = pack("i9pl", gmtime);
2628 # a real struct tm (on my system anyway)
2630 $utmp_template = "Z8 Z8 Z16 L";
2631 $utmp = pack($utmp_template, @utmp1);
2632 # a struct utmp (BSDish)
2634 @utmp2 = unpack($utmp_template, $utmp);
2635 # "@utmp1" eq "@utmp2"
2638 unpack("N", pack("B32", substr("0" x 32 . shift, -32)));
2641 The same template may generally also be used in unpack().
2645 =item package NAMESPACE
2647 Declares the compilation unit as being in the given namespace. The scope
2648 of the package declaration is from the declaration itself through the end of
2649 the enclosing block (the same scope as the C<local()> operator). All further
2650 unqualified dynamic identifiers will be in this namespace. A package
2651 statement affects only dynamic variables--including those you've used
2652 C<local()> on--but I<not> lexical variables created with C<my()>. Typically it
2653 would be the first declaration in a file to be included by the C<require>
2654 or C<use> operator. You can switch into a package in more than one place;
2655 it merely influences which symbol table is used by the compiler for the
2656 rest of that block. You can refer to variables and filehandles in other
2657 packages by prefixing the identifier with the package name and a double
2658 colon: C<$Package::Variable>. If the package name is null, the C<main>
2659 package as assumed. That is, C<$::sail> is equivalent to C<$main::sail>.
2661 If NAMESPACE is omitted, then there is no current package, and all
2662 identifiers must be fully qualified or lexicals. This is stricter
2663 than C<use strict>, since it also extends to function names.
2665 See L<perlmod/"Packages"> for more information about packages, modules,
2666 and classes. See L<perlsub> for other scoping issues.
2668 =item pipe READHANDLE,WRITEHANDLE
2670 Opens a pair of connected pipes like the corresponding system call.
2671 Note that if you set up a loop of piped processes, deadlock can occur
2672 unless you are very careful. In addition, note that Perl's pipes use
2673 stdio buffering, so you may need to set C<$|> to flush your WRITEHANDLE
2674 after each command, depending on the application.
2676 See L<IPC::Open2>, L<IPC::Open3>, and L<perlipc/"Bidirectional Communication">
2677 for examples of such things.
2679 On systems that support a close-on-exec flag on files, the flag will be set
2680 for the newly opened file descriptors as determined by the value of $^F.
2687 Pops and returns the last value of the array, shortening the array by
2688 1. Has a similar effect to
2690 $tmp = $ARRAY[$#ARRAY--];
2692 If there are no elements in the array, returns the undefined value.
2693 If ARRAY is omitted, pops the
2694 C<@ARGV> array in the main program, and the C<@_> array in subroutines, just
2701 Returns the offset of where the last C<m//g> search left off for the variable
2702 is in question (C<$_> is used when the variable is not specified). May be
2703 modified to change that offset. Such modification will also influence
2704 the C<\G> zero-width assertion in regular expressions. See L<perlre> and
2707 =item print FILEHANDLE LIST
2713 Prints a string or a comma-separated list of strings. Returns TRUE
2714 if successful. FILEHANDLE may be a scalar variable name, in which case
2715 the variable contains the name of or a reference to the filehandle, thus introducing one
2716 level of indirection. (NOTE: If FILEHANDLE is a variable and the next
2717 token is a term, it may be misinterpreted as an operator unless you
2718 interpose a C<+> or put parentheses around the arguments.) If FILEHANDLE is
2719 omitted, prints by default to standard output (or to the last selected
2720 output channel--see L</select>). If LIST is also omitted, prints C<$_> to
2721 the currently selected output channel. To set the default output channel to something other than
2722 STDOUT use the select operation. Note that, because print takes a
2723 LIST, anything in the LIST is evaluated in list context, and any
2724 subroutine that you call will have one or more of its expressions
2725 evaluated in list context. Also be careful not to follow the print
2726 keyword with a left parenthesis unless you want the corresponding right
2727 parenthesis to terminate the arguments to the print--interpose a C<+> or
2728 put parentheses around all the arguments.
2730 Note that if you're storing FILEHANDLES in an array or other expression,
2731 you will have to use a block returning its value instead:
2733 print { $files[$i] } "stuff\n";
2734 print { $OK ? STDOUT : STDERR } "stuff\n";
2736 =item printf FILEHANDLE FORMAT, LIST
2738 =item printf FORMAT, LIST
2740 Equivalent to C<print FILEHANDLE sprintf(FORMAT, LIST)>, except that C<$\>
2741 (the output record separator) is not appended. The first argument
2742 of the list will be interpreted as the C<printf()> format. If C<use locale> is
2743 in effect, the character used for the decimal point in formatted real numbers
2744 is affected by the LC_NUMERIC locale. See L<perllocale>.
2746 Don't fall into the trap of using a C<printf()> when a simple
2747 C<print()> would do. The C<print()> is more efficient and less
2750 =item prototype FUNCTION
2752 Returns the prototype of a function as a string (or C<undef> if the
2753 function has no prototype). FUNCTION is a reference to, or the name of,
2754 the function whose prototype you want to retrieve.
2756 If FUNCTION is a string starting with C<CORE::>, the rest is taken as
2757 a name for Perl builtin. If builtin is not I<overridable> (such as
2758 C<qw//>) or its arguments cannot be expressed by a prototype (such as
2759 C<system()>) - in other words, the builtin does not behave like a Perl
2760 function - returns C<undef>. Otherwise, the string describing the
2761 equivalent prototype is returned.
2763 =item push ARRAY,LIST
2765 Treats ARRAY as a stack, and pushes the values of LIST
2766 onto the end of ARRAY. The length of ARRAY increases by the length of
2767 LIST. Has the same effect as
2770 $ARRAY[++$#ARRAY] = $value;
2773 but is more efficient. Returns the new number of elements in the array.
2785 Generalized quotes. See L<perlop/"Regexp Quote-Like Operators">.
2787 =item quotemeta EXPR
2791 Returns the value of EXPR with all non-alphanumeric
2792 characters backslashed. (That is, all characters not matching
2793 C</[A-Za-z_0-9]/> will be preceded by a backslash in the
2794 returned string, regardless of any locale settings.)
2795 This is the internal function implementing
2796 the C<\Q> escape in double-quoted strings.
2798 If EXPR is omitted, uses C<$_>.
2804 Returns a random fractional number greater than or equal to C<0> and less
2805 than the value of EXPR. (EXPR should be positive.) If EXPR is
2806 omitted, the value C<1> is used. Automatically calls C<srand()> unless
2807 C<srand()> has already been called. See also C<srand()>.
2809 (Note: If your rand function consistently returns numbers that are too
2810 large or too small, then your version of Perl was probably compiled
2811 with the wrong number of RANDBITS.)
2813 =item read FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH,OFFSET
2815 =item read FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH
2817 Attempts to read LENGTH bytes of data into variable SCALAR from the
2818 specified FILEHANDLE. Returns the number of bytes actually read,
2819 C<0> at end of file, or undef if there was an error. SCALAR will be grown
2820 or shrunk to the length actually read. An OFFSET may be specified to
2821 place the read data at some other place than the beginning of the
2822 string. This call is actually implemented in terms of stdio's fread(3)
2823 call. To get a true read(2) system call, see C<sysread()>.
2825 =item readdir DIRHANDLE
2827 Returns the next directory entry for a directory opened by C<opendir()>.
2828 If used in list context, returns all the rest of the entries in the
2829 directory. If there are no more entries, returns an undefined value in
2830 scalar context or a null list in list context.
2832 If you're planning to filetest the return values out of a C<readdir()>, you'd
2833 better prepend the directory in question. Otherwise, because we didn't
2834 C<chdir()> there, it would have been testing the wrong file.
2836 opendir(DIR, $some_dir) || die "can't opendir $some_dir: $!";
2837 @dots = grep { /^\./ && -f "$some_dir/$_" } readdir(DIR);
2842 Reads from the filehandle whose typeglob is contained in EXPR. In scalar context, a single line
2843 is read and returned. In list context, reads until end-of-file is
2844 reached and returns a list of lines (however you've defined lines
2845 with C<$/> or C<$INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR>).
2846 This is the internal function implementing the C<E<lt>EXPRE<gt>>
2847 operator, but you can use it directly. The C<E<lt>EXPRE<gt>>
2848 operator is discussed in more detail in L<perlop/"I/O Operators">.
2851 $line = readline(*STDIN); # same thing
2857 Returns the value of a symbolic link, if symbolic links are
2858 implemented. If not, gives a fatal error. If there is some system
2859 error, returns the undefined value and sets C<$!> (errno). If EXPR is
2860 omitted, uses C<$_>.
2864 EXPR is executed as a system command.
2865 The collected standard output of the command is returned.
2866 In scalar context, it comes back as a single (potentially
2867 multi-line) string. In list context, returns a list of lines
2868 (however you've defined lines with C<$/> or C<$INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR>).
2869 This is the internal function implementing the C<qx/EXPR/>
2870 operator, but you can use it directly. The C<qx/EXPR/>
2871 operator is discussed in more detail in L<perlop/"I/O Operators">.
2873 =item recv SOCKET,SCALAR,LEN,FLAGS
2875 Receives a message on a socket. Attempts to receive LENGTH bytes of
2876 data into variable SCALAR from the specified SOCKET filehandle.
2877 Actually does a C C<recvfrom()>, so that it can return the address of the
2878 sender. Returns the undefined value if there's an error. SCALAR will
2879 be grown or shrunk to the length actually read. Takes the same flags
2880 as the system call of the same name.
2881 See L<perlipc/"UDP: Message Passing"> for examples.
2887 The C<redo> command restarts the loop block without evaluating the
2888 conditional again. The C<continue> block, if any, is not executed. If
2889 the LABEL is omitted, the command refers to the innermost enclosing
2890 loop. This command is normally used by programs that want to lie to
2891 themselves about what was just input:
2893 # a simpleminded Pascal comment stripper
2894 # (warning: assumes no { or } in strings)
2895 LINE: while (<STDIN>) {
2896 while (s|({.*}.*){.*}|$1 |) {}
2901 if (/}/) { # end of comment?
2910 C<redo> cannot be used to retry a block which returns a value such as
2911 C<eval {}>, C<sub {}> or C<do {}>.
2913 See also L</continue> for an illustration of how C<last>, C<next>, and
2920 Returns a TRUE value if EXPR is a reference, FALSE otherwise. If EXPR
2921 is not specified, C<$_> will be used. The value returned depends on the
2922 type of thing the reference is a reference to.
2923 Builtin types include:
2932 If the referenced object has been blessed into a package, then that package
2933 name is returned instead. You can think of C<ref()> as a C<typeof()> operator.
2935 if (ref($r) eq "HASH") {
2936 print "r is a reference to a hash.\n";
2939 print "r is not a reference at all.\n";
2942 See also L<perlref>.
2944 =item rename OLDNAME,NEWNAME
2946 Changes the name of a file. Returns C<1> for success, C<0> otherwise. Will
2947 not work across file system boundaries.
2953 Demands some semantics specified by EXPR, or by C<$_> if EXPR is not
2954 supplied. If EXPR is numeric, demands that the current version of Perl
2955 (C<$]> or $PERL_VERSION) be equal or greater than EXPR.
2957 Otherwise, demands that a library file be included if it hasn't already
2958 been included. The file is included via the do-FILE mechanism, which is
2959 essentially just a variety of C<eval()>. Has semantics similar to the following
2964 return 1 if $INC{$filename};
2965 my($realfilename,$result);
2967 foreach $prefix (@INC) {
2968 $realfilename = "$prefix/$filename";
2969 if (-f $realfilename) {
2970 $result = do $realfilename;
2974 die "Can't find $filename in \@INC";
2977 die "$filename did not return true value" unless $result;
2978 $INC{$filename} = $realfilename;
2982 Note that the file will not be included twice under the same specified
2983 name. The file must return TRUE as the last statement to indicate
2984 successful execution of any initialization code, so it's customary to
2985 end such a file with "C<1;>" unless you're sure it'll return TRUE
2986 otherwise. But it's better just to put the "C<1;>", in case you add more
2989 If EXPR is a bareword, the require assumes a "F<.pm>" extension and
2990 replaces "F<::>" with "F</>" in the filename for you,
2991 to make it easy to load standard modules. This form of loading of
2992 modules does not risk altering your namespace.
2994 In other words, if you try this:
2996 require Foo::Bar; # a splendid bareword
2998 The require function will actually look for the "F<Foo/Bar.pm>" file in the
2999 directories specified in the C<@INC> array.
3001 But if you try this:
3003 $class = 'Foo::Bar';
3004 require $class; # $class is not a bareword
3006 require "Foo::Bar"; # not a bareword because of the ""
3008 The require function will look for the "F<Foo::Bar>" file in the @INC array and
3009 will complain about not finding "F<Foo::Bar>" there. In this case you can do:
3011 eval "require $class";
3013 For a yet-more-powerful import facility, see L</use> and L<perlmod>.
3019 Generally used in a C<continue> block at the end of a loop to clear
3020 variables and reset C<??> searches so that they work again. The
3021 expression is interpreted as a list of single characters (hyphens
3022 allowed for ranges). All variables and arrays beginning with one of
3023 those letters are reset to their pristine state. If the expression is
3024 omitted, one-match searches (C<?pattern?>) are reset to match again. Resets
3025 only variables or searches in the current package. Always returns
3028 reset 'X'; # reset all X variables
3029 reset 'a-z'; # reset lower case variables
3030 reset; # just reset ?? searches
3032 Resetting C<"A-Z"> is not recommended because you'll wipe out your
3033 C<@ARGV> and C<@INC> arrays and your C<%ENV> hash. Resets only package variables--lexical variables
3034 are unaffected, but they clean themselves up on scope exit anyway,
3035 so you'll probably want to use them instead. See L</my>.
3041 Returns from a subroutine, C<eval()>, or C<do FILE> with the value
3042 given in EXPR. Evaluation of EXPR may be in list, scalar, or void
3043 context, depending on how the return value will be used, and the context
3044 may vary from one execution to the next (see C<wantarray()>). If no EXPR
3045 is given, returns an empty list in list context, an undefined value in
3046 scalar context, or nothing in a void context.
3048 (Note that in the absence of a return, a subroutine, eval, or do FILE
3049 will automatically return the value of the last expression evaluated.)
3053 In list context, returns a list value consisting of the elements
3054 of LIST in the opposite order. In scalar context, concatenates the
3055 elements of LIST, and returns a string value with all the characters
3056 in the opposite order.
3058 print reverse <>; # line tac, last line first
3060 undef $/; # for efficiency of <>
3061 print scalar reverse <>; # character tac, last line tsrif
3063 This operator is also handy for inverting a hash, although there are some
3064 caveats. If a value is duplicated in the original hash, only one of those
3065 can be represented as a key in the inverted hash. Also, this has to
3066 unwind one hash and build a whole new one, which may take some time
3069 %by_name = reverse %by_address; # Invert the hash
3071 =item rewinddir DIRHANDLE
3073 Sets the current position to the beginning of the directory for the
3074 C<readdir()> routine on DIRHANDLE.
3076 =item rindex STR,SUBSTR,POSITION
3078 =item rindex STR,SUBSTR
3080 Works just like index except that it returns the position of the LAST
3081 occurrence of SUBSTR in STR. If POSITION is specified, returns the
3082 last occurrence at or before that position.
3084 =item rmdir FILENAME
3088 Deletes the directory specified by FILENAME if that directory is empty. If it
3089 succeeds it returns TRUE, otherwise it returns FALSE and sets C<$!> (errno). If
3090 FILENAME is omitted, uses C<$_>.
3094 The substitution operator. See L<perlop>.
3098 Forces EXPR to be interpreted in scalar context and returns the value
3101 @counts = ( scalar @a, scalar @b, scalar @c );
3103 There is no equivalent operator to force an expression to
3104 be interpolated in list context because it's in practice never
3105 needed. If you really wanted to do so, however, you could use
3106 the construction C<@{[ (some expression) ]}>, but usually a simple
3107 C<(some expression)> suffices.
3109 Though C<scalar> can be considered in general to be a unary operator,
3110 EXPR is also allowed to be a parenthesized list. The list in fact
3111 behaves as a scalar comma expression, evaluating all but the last
3112 element in void context and returning the final element evaluated in
3115 The following single statement:
3117 print uc(scalar(&foo,$bar)),$baz;
3119 is the moral equivalent of these two:
3122 print(uc($bar),$baz);
3124 See L<perlop> for more details on unary operators and the comma operator.
3126 =item seek FILEHANDLE,POSITION,WHENCE
3128 Sets FILEHANDLE's position, just like the C<fseek()> call of C<stdio()>.
3129 FILEHANDLE may be an expression whose value gives the name of the
3130 filehandle. The values for WHENCE are C<0> to set the new position to
3131 POSITION, C<1> to set it to the current position plus POSITION, and C<2> to
3132 set it to EOF plus POSITION (typically negative). For WHENCE you may
3133 use the constants C<SEEK_SET>, C<SEEK_CUR>, and C<SEEK_END> from either the
3134 C<IO::Seekable> or the POSIX module. Returns C<1> upon success, C<0> otherwise.
3136 If you want to position file for C<sysread()> or C<syswrite()>, don't use
3137 C<seek()> -- buffering makes its effect on the file's system position
3138 unpredictable and non-portable. Use C<sysseek()> instead.
3140 On some systems you have to do a seek whenever you switch between reading
3141 and writing. Amongst other things, this may have the effect of calling
3142 stdio's clearerr(3). A WHENCE of C<1> (C<SEEK_CUR>) is useful for not moving
3147 This is also useful for applications emulating C<tail -f>. Once you hit
3148 EOF on your read, and then sleep for a while, you might have to stick in a
3149 seek() to reset things. The C<seek()> doesn't change the current position,
3150 but it I<does> clear the end-of-file condition on the handle, so that the
3151 next C<E<lt>FILEE<gt>> makes Perl try again to read something. We hope.
3153 If that doesn't work (some stdios are particularly cantankerous), then
3154 you may need something more like this:
3157 for ($curpos = tell(FILE); $_ = <FILE>;
3158 $curpos = tell(FILE)) {
3159 # search for some stuff and put it into files
3161 sleep($for_a_while);
3162 seek(FILE, $curpos, 0);
3165 =item seekdir DIRHANDLE,POS
3167 Sets the current position for the C<readdir()> routine on DIRHANDLE. POS
3168 must be a value returned by C<telldir()>. Has the same caveats about
3169 possible directory compaction as the corresponding system library
3172 =item select FILEHANDLE
3176 Returns the currently selected filehandle. Sets the current default
3177 filehandle for output, if FILEHANDLE is supplied. This has two
3178 effects: first, a C<write()> or a C<print()> without a filehandle will
3179 default to this FILEHANDLE. Second, references to variables related to
3180 output will refer to this output channel. For example, if you have to
3181 set the top of form format for more than one output channel, you might
3189 FILEHANDLE may be an expression whose value gives the name of the
3190 actual filehandle. Thus:
3192 $oldfh = select(STDERR); $| = 1; select($oldfh);
3194 Some programmers may prefer to think of filehandles as objects with
3195 methods, preferring to write the last example as:
3198 STDERR->autoflush(1);
3200 =item select RBITS,WBITS,EBITS,TIMEOUT
3202 This calls the select(2) system call with the bit masks specified, which
3203 can be constructed using C<fileno()> and C<vec()>, along these lines:
3205 $rin = $win = $ein = '';
3206 vec($rin,fileno(STDIN),1) = 1;
3207 vec($win,fileno(STDOUT),1) = 1;
3210 If you want to select on many filehandles you might wish to write a
3214 my(@fhlist) = split(' ',$_[0]);
3217 vec($bits,fileno($_),1) = 1;
3221 $rin = fhbits('STDIN TTY SOCK');
3225 ($nfound,$timeleft) =
3226 select($rout=$rin, $wout=$win, $eout=$ein, $timeout);
3228 or to block until something becomes ready just do this
3230 $nfound = select($rout=$rin, $wout=$win, $eout=$ein, undef);
3232 Most systems do not bother to return anything useful in C<$timeleft>, so
3233 calling select() in scalar context just returns C<$nfound>.
3235 Any of the bit masks can also be undef. The timeout, if specified, is
3236 in seconds, which may be fractional. Note: not all implementations are
3237 capable of returning theC<$timeleft>. If not, they always return
3238 C<$timeleft> equal to the supplied C<$timeout>.
3240 You can effect a sleep of 250 milliseconds this way:
3242 select(undef, undef, undef, 0.25);
3244 B<WARNING>: One should not attempt to mix buffered I/O (like C<read()>
3245 or E<lt>FHE<gt>) with C<select()>, except as permitted by POSIX, and even
3246 then only on POSIX systems. You have to use C<sysread()> instead.
3248 =item semctl ID,SEMNUM,CMD,ARG
3250 Calls the System V IPC function C<semctl()>. You'll probably have to say
3254 first to get the correct constant definitions. If CMD is IPC_STAT or
3255 GETALL, then ARG must be a variable which will hold the returned
3256 semid_ds structure or semaphore value array. Returns like C<ioctl()>: the
3257 undefined value for error, "C<0> but true" for zero, or the actual return
3258 value otherwise. See also C<IPC::SysV> and C<IPC::Semaphore> documentation.
3260 =item semget KEY,NSEMS,FLAGS
3262 Calls the System V IPC function semget. Returns the semaphore id, or
3263 the undefined value if there is an error. See also C<IPC::SysV> and
3264 C<IPC::SysV::Semaphore> documentation.
3266 =item semop KEY,OPSTRING
3268 Calls the System V IPC function semop to perform semaphore operations
3269 such as signaling and waiting. OPSTRING must be a packed array of
3270 semop structures. Each semop structure can be generated with
3271 C<pack("sss", $semnum, $semop, $semflag)>. The number of semaphore
3272 operations is implied by the length of OPSTRING. Returns TRUE if
3273 successful, or FALSE if there is an error. As an example, the
3274 following code waits on semaphore C<$semnum> of semaphore id C<$semid>:
3276 $semop = pack("sss", $semnum, -1, 0);
3277 die "Semaphore trouble: $!\n" unless semop($semid, $semop);
3279 To signal the semaphore, replace C<-1> with C<1>. See also C<IPC::SysV>
3280 and C<IPC::SysV::Semaphore> documentation.
3282 =item send SOCKET,MSG,FLAGS,TO
3284 =item send SOCKET,MSG,FLAGS
3286 Sends a message on a socket. Takes the same flags as the system call
3287 of the same name. On unconnected sockets you must specify a
3288 destination to send TO, in which case it does a C C<sendto()>. Returns
3289 the number of characters sent, or the undefined value if there is an
3291 See L<perlipc/"UDP: Message Passing"> for examples.
3293 =item setpgrp PID,PGRP
3295 Sets the current process group for the specified PID, C<0> for the current
3296 process. Will produce a fatal error if used on a machine that doesn't
3297 implement setpgrp(2). If the arguments are omitted, it defaults to
3298 C<0,0>. Note that the POSIX version of C<setpgrp()> does not accept any
3299 arguments, so only setpgrp C<0,0> is portable.
3301 =item setpriority WHICH,WHO,PRIORITY
3303 Sets the current priority for a process, a process group, or a user.
3304 (See setpriority(2).) Will produce a fatal error if used on a machine
3305 that doesn't implement setpriority(2).
3307 =item setsockopt SOCKET,LEVEL,OPTNAME,OPTVAL
3309 Sets the socket option requested. Returns undefined if there is an
3310 error. OPTVAL may be specified as C<undef> if you don't want to pass an
3317 Shifts the first value of the array off and returns it, shortening the
3318 array by 1 and moving everything down. If there are no elements in the
3319 array, returns the undefined value. If ARRAY is omitted, shifts the
3320 C<@_> array within the lexical scope of subroutines and formats, and the
3321 C<@ARGV> array at file scopes or within the lexical scopes established by
3322 the C<eval ''>, C<BEGIN {}>, C<END {}>, and C<INIT {}> constructs.
3323 See also C<unshift()>, C<push()>, and C<pop()>. C<Shift()> and C<unshift()> do the
3324 same thing to the left end of an array that C<pop()> and C<push()> do to the
3327 =item shmctl ID,CMD,ARG
3329 Calls the System V IPC function shmctl. You'll probably have to say
3333 first to get the correct constant definitions. If CMD is C<IPC_STAT>,
3334 then ARG must be a variable which will hold the returned C<shmid_ds>
3335 structure. Returns like ioctl: the undefined value for error, "C<0> but
3336 true" for zero, or the actual return value otherwise.
3337 See also C<IPC::SysV> documentation.
3339 =item shmget KEY,SIZE,FLAGS
3341 Calls the System V IPC function shmget. Returns the shared memory
3342 segment id, or the undefined value if there is an error.
3343 See also C<IPC::SysV> documentation.
3345 =item shmread ID,VAR,POS,SIZE
3347 =item shmwrite ID,STRING,POS,SIZE
3349 Reads or writes the System V shared memory segment ID starting at
3350 position POS for size SIZE by attaching to it, copying in/out, and
3351 detaching from it. When reading, VAR must be a variable that will
3352 hold the data read. When writing, if STRING is too long, only SIZE
3353 bytes are used; if STRING is too short, nulls are written to fill out
3354 SIZE bytes. Return TRUE if successful, or FALSE if there is an error.
3355 See also C<IPC::SysV> documentation.
3357 =item shutdown SOCKET,HOW
3359 Shuts down a socket connection in the manner indicated by HOW, which
3360 has the same interpretation as in the system call of the same name.
3362 shutdown(SOCKET, 0); # I/we have stopped reading data
3363 shutdown(SOCKET, 1); # I/we have stopped writing data
3364 shutdown(SOCKET, 2); # I/we have stopped using this socket
3366 This is useful with sockets when you want to tell the other
3367 side you're done writing but not done reading, or vice versa.
3368 It's also a more insistent form of close because it also
3369 disables the filedescriptor in any forked copies in other
3376 Returns the sine of EXPR (expressed in radians). If EXPR is omitted,
3377 returns sine of C<$_>.
3379 For the inverse sine operation, you may use the C<POSIX::asin()>
3380 function, or use this relation:
3382 sub asin { atan2($_[0], sqrt(1 - $_[0] * $_[0])) }
3388 Causes the script to sleep for EXPR seconds, or forever if no EXPR.
3389 May be interrupted if the process receives a signal such as C<SIGALRM>.
3390 Returns the number of seconds actually slept. You probably cannot
3391 mix C<alarm()> and C<sleep()> calls, because C<sleep()> is often implemented
3394 On some older systems, it may sleep up to a full second less than what
3395 you requested, depending on how it counts seconds. Most modern systems
3396 always sleep the full amount. They may appear to sleep longer than that,
3397 however, because your process might not be scheduled right away in a
3398 busy multitasking system.
3400 For delays of finer granularity than one second, you may use Perl's
3401 C<syscall()> interface to access setitimer(2) if your system supports it,
3402 or else see L</select> above.
3404 See also the POSIX module's C<sigpause()> function.
3406 =item socket SOCKET,DOMAIN,TYPE,PROTOCOL
3408 Opens a socket of the specified kind and attaches it to filehandle
3409 SOCKET. DOMAIN, TYPE, and PROTOCOL are specified the same as for the
3410 system call of the same name. You should "C<use Socket;>" first to get
3411 the proper definitions imported. See the example in L<perlipc/"Sockets: Client/Server Communication">.
3413 =item socketpair SOCKET1,SOCKET2,DOMAIN,TYPE,PROTOCOL
3415 Creates an unnamed pair of sockets in the specified domain, of the
3416 specified type. DOMAIN, TYPE, and PROTOCOL are specified the same as
3417 for the system call of the same name. If unimplemented, yields a fatal
3418 error. Returns TRUE if successful.
3420 Some systems defined C<pipe()> in terms of C<socketpair()>, in which a call
3421 to C<pipe(Rdr, Wtr)> is essentially:
3424 socketpair(Rdr, Wtr, AF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM, PF_UNSPEC);
3425 shutdown(Rdr, 1); # no more writing for reader
3426 shutdown(Wtr, 0); # no more reading for writer
3428 See L<perlipc> for an example of socketpair use.
3430 =item sort SUBNAME LIST
3432 =item sort BLOCK LIST
3436 Sorts the LIST and returns the sorted list value. If SUBNAME or BLOCK
3437 is omitted, C<sort()>s in standard string comparison order. If SUBNAME is
3438 specified, it gives the name of a subroutine that returns an integer
3439 less than, equal to, or greater than C<0>, depending on how the elements
3440 of the array are to be ordered. (The C<E<lt>=E<gt>> and C<cmp>
3441 operators are extremely useful in such routines.) SUBNAME may be a
3442 scalar variable name (unsubscripted), in which case the value provides
3443 the name of (or a reference to) the actual subroutine to use. In place
3444 of a SUBNAME, you can provide a BLOCK as an anonymous, in-line sort
3447 In the interests of efficiency the normal calling code for subroutines is
3448 bypassed, with the following effects: the subroutine may not be a
3449 recursive subroutine, and the two elements to be compared are passed into
3450 the subroutine not via C<@_> but as the package global variables C<$a> and
3451 C<$b> (see example below). They are passed by reference, so don't
3452 modify C<$a> and C<$b>. And don't try to declare them as lexicals either.
3454 You also cannot exit out of the sort block or subroutine using any of the
3455 loop control operators described in L<perlsyn> or with C<goto()>.
3457 When C<use locale> is in effect, C<sort LIST> sorts LIST according to the
3458 current collation locale. See L<perllocale>.
3463 @articles = sort @files;
3465 # same thing, but with explicit sort routine
3466 @articles = sort {$a cmp $b} @files;
3468 # now case-insensitively
3469 @articles = sort {uc($a) cmp uc($b)} @files;
3471 # same thing in reversed order
3472 @articles = sort {$b cmp $a} @files;
3474 # sort numerically ascending
3475 @articles = sort {$a <=> $b} @files;
3477 # sort numerically descending
3478 @articles = sort {$b <=> $a} @files;
3480 # sort using explicit subroutine name
3482 $age{$a} <=> $age{$b}; # presuming numeric
3484 @sortedclass = sort byage @class;
3486 # this sorts the %age hash by value instead of key
3487 # using an in-line function
3488 @eldest = sort { $age{$b} <=> $age{$a} } keys %age;
3490 sub backwards { $b cmp $a; }
3491 @harry = ('dog','cat','x','Cain','Abel');
3492 @george = ('gone','chased','yz','Punished','Axed');
3494 # prints AbelCaincatdogx
3495 print sort backwards @harry;
3496 # prints xdogcatCainAbel
3497 print sort @george, 'to', @harry;
3498 # prints AbelAxedCainPunishedcatchaseddoggonetoxyz
3500 # inefficiently sort by descending numeric compare using
3501 # the first integer after the first = sign, or the
3502 # whole record case-insensitively otherwise
3505 ($b =~ /=(\d+)/)[0] <=> ($a =~ /=(\d+)/)[0]
3510 # same thing, but much more efficiently;
3511 # we'll build auxiliary indices instead
3515 push @nums, /=(\d+)/;
3520 $nums[$b] <=> $nums[$a]
3522 $caps[$a] cmp $caps[$b]
3526 # same thing using a Schwartzian Transform (no temps)
3527 @new = map { $_->[0] }
3528 sort { $b->[1] <=> $a->[1]
3531 } map { [$_, /=(\d+)/, uc($_)] } @old;
3533 If you're using strict, you I<MUST NOT> declare C<$a>
3534 and C<$b> as lexicals. They are package globals. That means
3535 if you're in the C<main> package, it's
3537 @articles = sort {$main::b <=> $main::a} @files;
3541 @articles = sort {$::b <=> $::a} @files;
3543 but if you're in the C<FooPack> package, it's
3545 @articles = sort {$FooPack::b <=> $FooPack::a} @files;
3547 The comparison function is required to behave. If it returns
3548 inconsistent results (sometimes saying C<$x[1]> is less than C<$x[2]> and
3549 sometimes saying the opposite, for example) the results are not
3552 =item splice ARRAY,OFFSET,LENGTH,LIST
3554 =item splice ARRAY,OFFSET,LENGTH
3556 =item splice ARRAY,OFFSET
3558 Removes the elements designated by OFFSET and LENGTH from an array, and
3559 replaces them with the elements of LIST, if any. In list context,
3560 returns the elements removed from the array. In scalar context,
3561 returns the last element removed, or C<undef> if no elements are
3562 removed. The array grows or shrinks as necessary.
3563 If OFFSET is negative then it start that far from the end of the array.
3564 If LENGTH is omitted, removes everything from OFFSET onward.
3565 If LENGTH is negative, leave that many elements off the end of the array.
3566 The following equivalences hold (assuming C<$[ == 0>):
3568 push(@a,$x,$y) splice(@a,@a,0,$x,$y)
3569 pop(@a) splice(@a,-1)
3570 shift(@a) splice(@a,0,1)
3571 unshift(@a,$x,$y) splice(@a,0,0,$x,$y)
3572 $a[$x] = $y splice(@a,$x,1,$y)
3574 Example, assuming array lengths are passed before arrays:
3576 sub aeq { # compare two list values
3577 my(@a) = splice(@_,0,shift);
3578 my(@b) = splice(@_,0,shift);
3579 return 0 unless @a == @b; # same len?
3581 return 0 if pop(@a) ne pop(@b);
3585 if (&aeq($len,@foo[1..$len],0+@bar,@bar)) { ... }
3587 =item split /PATTERN/,EXPR,LIMIT
3589 =item split /PATTERN/,EXPR
3591 =item split /PATTERN/
3595 Splits a string into an array of strings, and returns it. By default,
3596 empty leading fields are preserved, and empty trailing ones are deleted.
3598 If not in list context, returns the number of fields found and splits into
3599 the C<@_> array. (In list context, you can force the split into C<@_> by
3600 using C<??> as the pattern delimiters, but it still returns the list
3601 value.) The use of implicit split to C<@_> is deprecated, however, because
3602 it clobbers your subroutine arguments.
3604 If EXPR is omitted, splits the C<$_> string. If PATTERN is also omitted,
3605 splits on whitespace (after skipping any leading whitespace). Anything
3606 matching PATTERN is taken to be a delimiter separating the fields. (Note
3607 that the delimiter may be longer than one character.)
3609 If LIMIT is specified and positive, splits into no more than that
3610 many fields (though it may split into fewer). If LIMIT is unspecified
3611 or zero, trailing null fields are stripped (which potential users
3612 of C<pop()> would do well to remember). If LIMIT is negative, it is
3613 treated as if an arbitrarily large LIMIT had been specified.
3615 A pattern matching the null string (not to be confused with
3616 a null pattern C<//>, which is just one member of the set of patterns
3617 matching a null string) will split the value of EXPR into separate
3618 characters at each point it matches that way. For example:
3620 print join(':', split(/ */, 'hi there'));
3622 produces the output 'h:i:t:h:e:r:e'.
3624 The LIMIT parameter can be used to split a line partially
3626 ($login, $passwd, $remainder) = split(/:/, $_, 3);
3628 When assigning to a list, if LIMIT is omitted, Perl supplies a LIMIT
3629 one larger than the number of variables in the list, to avoid
3630 unnecessary work. For the list above LIMIT would have been 4 by
3631 default. In time critical applications it behooves you not to split
3632 into more fields than you really need.
3634 If the PATTERN contains parentheses, additional array elements are
3635 created from each matching substring in the delimiter.
3637 split(/([,-])/, "1-10,20", 3);
3639 produces the list value
3641 (1, '-', 10, ',', 20)
3643 If you had the entire header of a normal Unix email message in C<$header>,
3644 you could split it up into fields and their values this way:
3646 $header =~ s/\n\s+/ /g; # fix continuation lines
3647 %hdrs = (UNIX_FROM => split /^(\S*?):\s*/m, $header);
3649 The pattern C</PATTERN/> may be replaced with an expression to specify
3650 patterns that vary at runtime. (To do runtime compilation only once,
3651 use C</$variable/o>.)
3653 As a special case, specifying a PATTERN of space (C<' '>) will split on
3654 white space just as C<split()> with no arguments does. Thus, C<split(' ')> can
3655 be used to emulate B<awk>'s default behavior, whereas C<split(/ /)>
3656 will give you as many null initial fields as there are leading spaces.
3657 A C<split()> on C</\s+/> is like a C<split(' ')> except that any leading
3658 whitespace produces a null first field. A C<split()> with no arguments
3659 really does a C<split(' ', $_)> internally.
3663 open(PASSWD, '/etc/passwd');
3665 ($login, $passwd, $uid, $gid,
3666 $gcos, $home, $shell) = split(/:/);
3670 (Note that C<$shell> above will still have a newline on it. See L</chop>,
3671 L</chomp>, and L</join>.)
3673 =item sprintf FORMAT, LIST
3675 Returns a string formatted by the usual C<printf()> conventions of the
3676 C library function C<sprintf()>. See L<sprintf(3)> or L<printf(3)>
3677 on your system for an explanation of the general principles.
3679 Perl does its own C<sprintf()> formatting -- it emulates the C
3680 function C<sprintf()>, but it doesn't use it (except for floating-point
3681 numbers, and even then only the standard modifiers are allowed). As a
3682 result, any non-standard extensions in your local C<sprintf()> are not
3683 available from Perl.
3685 Perl's C<sprintf()> permits the following universally-known conversions:
3688 %c a character with the given number
3690 %d a signed integer, in decimal
3691 %u an unsigned integer, in decimal
3692 %o an unsigned integer, in octal
3693 %x an unsigned integer, in hexadecimal
3694 %e a floating-point number, in scientific notation
3695 %f a floating-point number, in fixed decimal notation
3696 %g a floating-point number, in %e or %f notation
3698 In addition, Perl permits the following widely-supported conversions:
3700 %X like %x, but using upper-case letters
3701 %E like %e, but using an upper-case "E"
3702 %G like %g, but with an upper-case "E" (if applicable)
3703 %b an unsigned integer, in binary
3704 %p a pointer (outputs the Perl value's address in hexadecimal)
3705 %n special: *stores* the number of characters output so far
3706 into the next variable in the parameter list
3708 Finally, for backward (and we do mean "backward") compatibility, Perl
3709 permits these unnecessary but widely-supported conversions:
3712 %D a synonym for %ld
3713 %U a synonym for %lu
3714 %O a synonym for %lo
3717 Perl permits the following universally-known flags between the C<%>
3718 and the conversion letter:
3720 space prefix positive number with a space
3721 + prefix positive number with a plus sign
3722 - left-justify within the field
3723 0 use zeros, not spaces, to right-justify
3724 # prefix non-zero octal with "0", non-zero hex with "0x"
3725 number minimum field width
3726 .number "precision": digits after decimal point for
3727 floating-point, max length for string, minimum length
3729 l interpret integer as C type "long" or "unsigned long"
3730 h interpret integer as C type "short" or "unsigned short"
3732 There is also one Perl-specific flag:
3734 V interpret integer as Perl's standard integer type
3736 Where a number would appear in the flags, an asterisk ("C<*>") may be
3737 used instead, in which case Perl uses the next item in the parameter
3738 list as the given number (that is, as the field width or precision).
3739 If a field width obtained through "C<*>" is negative, it has the same
3740 effect as the "C<->" flag: left-justification.
3742 If C<use locale> is in effect, the character used for the decimal
3743 point in formatted real numbers is affected by the LC_NUMERIC locale.
3750 Return the square root of EXPR. If EXPR is omitted, returns square
3757 Sets the random number seed for the C<rand()> operator. If EXPR is
3758 omitted, uses a semi-random value supplied by the kernel (if it supports
3759 the F</dev/urandom> device) or based on the current time and process
3760 ID, among other things. In versions of Perl prior to 5.004 the default
3761 seed was just the current C<time()>. This isn't a particularly good seed,
3762 so many old programs supply their own seed value (often C<time ^ $$> or
3763 C<time ^ ($$ + ($$ E<lt>E<lt> 15))>), but that isn't necessary any more.
3765 In fact, it's usually not necessary to call C<srand()> at all, because if
3766 it is not called explicitly, it is called implicitly at the first use of
3767 the C<rand()> operator. However, this was not the case in version of Perl
3768 before 5.004, so if your script will run under older Perl versions, it
3769 should call C<srand()>.
3771 Note that you need something much more random than the default seed for
3772 cryptographic purposes. Checksumming the compressed output of one or more
3773 rapidly changing operating system status programs is the usual method. For
3776 srand (time ^ $$ ^ unpack "%L*", `ps axww | gzip`);
3778 If you're particularly concerned with this, see the C<Math::TrulyRandom>
3781 Do I<not> call C<srand()> multiple times in your program unless you know
3782 exactly what you're doing and why you're doing it. The point of the
3783 function is to "seed" the C<rand()> function so that C<rand()> can produce
3784 a different sequence each time you run your program. Just do it once at the
3785 top of your program, or you I<won't> get random numbers out of C<rand()>!
3787 Frequently called programs (like CGI scripts) that simply use
3791 for a seed can fall prey to the mathematical property that
3795 one-third of the time. So don't do that.
3797 =item stat FILEHANDLE
3803 Returns a 13-element list giving the status info for a file, either
3804 the file opened via FILEHANDLE, or named by EXPR. If EXPR is omitted,
3805 it stats C<$_>. Returns a null list if the stat fails. Typically used
3808 ($dev,$ino,$mode,$nlink,$uid,$gid,$rdev,$size,
3809 $atime,$mtime,$ctime,$blksize,$blocks)
3812 Not all fields are supported on all filesystem types. Here are the
3813 meaning of the fields:
3815 0 dev device number of filesystem
3817 2 mode file mode (type and permissions)
3818 3 nlink number of (hard) links to the file
3819 4 uid numeric user ID of file's owner
3820 5 gid numeric group ID of file's owner
3821 6 rdev the device identifier (special files only)
3822 7 size total size of file, in bytes
3823 8 atime last access time since the epoch
3824 9 mtime last modify time since the epoch
3825 10 ctime inode change time (NOT creation time!) since the epoch
3826 11 blksize preferred block size for file system I/O
3827 12 blocks actual number of blocks allocated
3829 (The epoch was at 00:00 January 1, 1970 GMT.)
3831 If stat is passed the special filehandle consisting of an underline, no
3832 stat is done, but the current contents of the stat structure from the
3833 last stat or filetest are returned. Example:
3835 if (-x $file && (($d) = stat(_)) && $d < 0) {
3836 print "$file is executable NFS file\n";
3839 (This works on machines only for which the device number is negative under NFS.)
3841 In scalar context, C<stat()> returns a boolean value indicating success
3842 or failure, and, if successful, sets the information associated with
3843 the special filehandle C<_>.
3849 Takes extra time to study SCALAR (C<$_> if unspecified) in anticipation of
3850 doing many pattern matches on the string before it is next modified.
3851 This may or may not save time, depending on the nature and number of
3852 patterns you are searching on, and on the distribution of character
3853 frequencies in the string to be searched -- you probably want to compare
3854 run times with and without it to see which runs faster. Those loops
3855 which scan for many short constant strings (including the constant
3856 parts of more complex patterns) will benefit most. You may have only
3857 one C<study()> active at a time -- if you study a different scalar the first
3858 is "unstudied". (The way C<study()> works is this: a linked list of every
3859 character in the string to be searched is made, so we know, for
3860 example, where all the C<'k'> characters are. From each search string,
3861 the rarest character is selected, based on some static frequency tables
3862 constructed from some C programs and English text. Only those places
3863 that contain this "rarest" character are examined.)
3865 For example, here is a loop that inserts index producing entries
3866 before any line containing a certain pattern:
3870 print ".IX foo\n" if /\bfoo\b/;
3871 print ".IX bar\n" if /\bbar\b/;
3872 print ".IX blurfl\n" if /\bblurfl\b/;
3877 In searching for C</\bfoo\b/>, only those locations in C<$_> that contain C<"f">
3878 will be looked at, because C<"f"> is rarer than C<"o">. In general, this is
3879 a big win except in pathological cases. The only question is whether
3880 it saves you more time than it took to build the linked list in the
3883 Note that if you have to look for strings that you don't know till
3884 runtime, you can build an entire loop as a string and C<eval()> that to
3885 avoid recompiling all your patterns all the time. Together with
3886 undefining C<$/> to input entire files as one record, this can be very
3887 fast, often faster than specialized programs like fgrep(1). The following
3888 scans a list of files (C<@files>) for a list of words (C<@words>), and prints
3889 out the names of those files that contain a match:
3891 $search = 'while (<>) { study;';
3892 foreach $word (@words) {
3893 $search .= "++\$seen{\$ARGV} if /\\b$word\\b/;\n";
3898 eval $search; # this screams
3899 $/ = "\n"; # put back to normal input delimiter
3900 foreach $file (sort keys(%seen)) {
3908 =item sub NAME BLOCK
3910 This is subroutine definition, not a real function I<per se>. With just a
3911 NAME (and possibly prototypes), it's just a forward declaration. Without
3912 a NAME, it's an anonymous function declaration, and does actually return a
3913 value: the CODE ref of the closure you just created. See L<perlsub> and
3914 L<perlref> for details.
3916 =item substr EXPR,OFFSET,LEN,REPLACEMENT
3918 =item substr EXPR,OFFSET,LEN
3920 =item substr EXPR,OFFSET
3922 Extracts a substring out of EXPR and returns it. First character is at
3923 offset C<0>, or whatever you've set C<$[> to (but don't do that).
3924 If OFFSET is negative (or more precisely, less than C<$[>), starts
3925 that far from the end of the string. If LEN is omitted, returns
3926 everything to the end of the string. If LEN is negative, leaves that
3927 many characters off the end of the string.
3929 If you specify a substring that is partly outside the string, the part
3930 within the string is returned. If the substring is totally outside
3931 the string a warning is produced.
3933 You can use the C<substr()> function
3934 as an lvalue, in which case EXPR must be an lvalue. If you assign
3935 something shorter than LEN, the string will shrink, and if you assign
3936 something longer than LEN, the string will grow to accommodate it. To
3937 keep the string the same length you may need to pad or chop your value
3940 An alternative to using C<substr()> as an lvalue is to specify the
3941 replacement string as the 4th argument. This allows you to replace
3942 parts of the EXPR and return what was there before in one operation.
3944 =item symlink OLDFILE,NEWFILE
3946 Creates a new filename symbolically linked to the old filename.
3947 Returns C<1> for success, C<0> otherwise. On systems that don't support
3948 symbolic links, produces a fatal error at run time. To check for that,
3951 $symlink_exists = eval { symlink("",""); 1 };
3955 Calls the system call specified as the first element of the list,
3956 passing the remaining elements as arguments to the system call. If
3957 unimplemented, produces a fatal error. The arguments are interpreted
3958 as follows: if a given argument is numeric, the argument is passed as
3959 an int. If not, the pointer to the string value is passed. You are
3960 responsible to make sure a string is pre-extended long enough to
3961 receive any result that might be written into a string. You can't use a
3962 string literal (or other read-only string) as an argument to C<syscall()>
3963 because Perl has to assume that any string pointer might be written
3965 integer arguments are not literals and have never been interpreted in a
3966 numeric context, you may need to add C<0> to them to force them to look
3967 like numbers. This emulates the C<syswrite()> function (or vice versa):
3969 require 'syscall.ph'; # may need to run h2ph
3971 syscall(&SYS_write, fileno(STDOUT), $s, length $s);
3973 Note that Perl supports passing of up to only 14 arguments to your system call,
3974 which in practice should usually suffice.
3976 Syscall returns whatever value returned by the system call it calls.
3977 If the system call fails, C<syscall()> returns C<-1> and sets C<$!> (errno).
3978 Note that some system calls can legitimately return C<-1>. The proper
3979 way to handle such calls is to assign C<$!=0;> before the call and
3980 check the value of C<$!> if syscall returns C<-1>.
3982 There's a problem with C<syscall(&SYS_pipe)>: it returns the file
3983 number of the read end of the pipe it creates. There is no way
3984 to retrieve the file number of the other end. You can avoid this
3985 problem by using C<pipe()> instead.
3987 =item sysopen FILEHANDLE,FILENAME,MODE
3989 =item sysopen FILEHANDLE,FILENAME,MODE,PERMS
3991 Opens the file whose filename is given by FILENAME, and associates it
3992 with FILEHANDLE. If FILEHANDLE is an expression, its value is used as
3993 the name of the real filehandle wanted. This function calls the
3994 underlying operating system's C<open()> function with the parameters
3995 FILENAME, MODE, PERMS.
3997 The possible values and flag bits of the MODE parameter are
3998 system-dependent; they are available via the standard module C<Fcntl>.
3999 For historical reasons, some values work on almost every system
4000 supported by perl: zero means read-only, one means write-only, and two
4001 means read/write. We know that these values do I<not> work under
4002 OS/390 & VM/ESA Unix and on the Macintosh; you probably don't want to
4003 use them in new code.
4005 If the file named by FILENAME does not exist and the C<open()> call creates
4006 it (typically because MODE includes the C<O_CREAT> flag), then the value of
4007 PERMS specifies the permissions of the newly created file. If you omit
4008 the PERMS argument to C<sysopen()>, Perl uses the octal value C<0666>.
4009 These permission values need to be in octal, and are modified by your
4010 process's current C<umask>.
4012 Seldom if ever use C<0644> as argument to C<sysopen()> because that
4013 takes away the user's option to have a more permissive umask. Better
4014 to omit it. See the perlfunc(1) entry on C<umask> for more on this.
4016 The C<IO::File> module provides a more object-oriented approach, if you're
4017 into that kind of thing.
4019 =item sysread FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH,OFFSET
4021 =item sysread FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH
4023 Attempts to read LENGTH bytes of data into variable SCALAR from the
4024 specified FILEHANDLE, using the system call read(2). It bypasses stdio,
4025 so mixing this with other kinds of reads, C<print()>, C<write()>,
4026 C<seek()>, C<tell()>, or C<eof()> can cause confusion because stdio
4027 usually buffers data. Returns the number of bytes actually read, C<0>
4028 at end of file, or undef if there was an error. SCALAR will be grown or
4029 shrunk so that the last byte actually read is the last byte of the
4030 scalar after the read.
4032 An OFFSET may be specified to place the read data at some place in the
4033 string other than the beginning. A negative OFFSET specifies
4034 placement at that many bytes counting backwards from the end of the
4035 string. A positive OFFSET greater than the length of SCALAR results
4036 in the string being padded to the required size with C<"\0"> bytes before
4037 the result of the read is appended.
4039 =item sysseek FILEHANDLE,POSITION,WHENCE
4041 Sets FILEHANDLE's system position using the system call lseek(2). It
4042 bypasses stdio, so mixing this with reads (other than C<sysread()>),
4043 C<print()>, C<write()>, C<seek()>, C<tell()>, or C<eof()> may cause
4044 confusion. FILEHANDLE may be an expression whose value gives the name
4045 of the filehandle. The values for WHENCE are C<0> to set the new
4046 position to POSITION, C<1> to set the it to the current position plus
4047 POSITION, and C<2> to set it to EOF plus POSITION (typically negative).
4048 For WHENCE, you may use the constants C<SEEK_SET>, C<SEEK_CUR>, and
4049 C<SEEK_END> from either the C<IO::Seekable> or the POSIX module.
4051 Returns the new position, or the undefined value on failure. A position
4052 of zero is returned as the string "C<0> but true"; thus C<sysseek()> returns
4053 TRUE on success and FALSE on failure, yet you can still easily determine
4058 =item system PROGRAM LIST
4060 Does exactly the same thing as "C<exec LIST>" except that a fork is done
4061 first, and the parent process waits for the child process to complete.
4062 Note that argument processing varies depending on the number of
4063 arguments. If there is more than one argument in LIST, or if LIST is
4064 an array with more than one value, starts the program given by the
4065 first element of the list with arguments given by the rest of the list.
4066 If there is only one scalar argument, the argument is
4067 checked for shell metacharacters, and if there are any, the entire
4068 argument is passed to the system's command shell for parsing (this is
4069 C</bin/sh -c> on Unix platforms, but varies on other platforms). If
4070 there are no shell metacharacters in the argument, it is split into
4071 words and passed directly to C<execvp()>, which is more efficient.
4073 The return value is the exit status of the program as
4074 returned by the C<wait()> call. To get the actual exit value divide by
4075 256. See also L</exec>. This is I<NOT> what you want to use to capture
4076 the output from a command, for that you should use merely backticks or
4077 C<qx//>, as described in L<perlop/"`STRING`">.
4079 Like C<exec()>, C<system()> allows you to lie to a program about its name if
4080 you use the "C<system PROGRAM LIST>" syntax. Again, see L</exec>.
4082 Because C<system()> and backticks block C<SIGINT> and C<SIGQUIT>, killing the
4083 program they're running doesn't actually interrupt your program.
4085 @args = ("command", "arg1", "arg2");
4087 or die "system @args failed: $?"
4089 You can check all the failure possibilities by inspecting
4092 $exit_value = $? >> 8;
4093 $signal_num = $? & 127;
4094 $dumped_core = $? & 128;
4096 When the arguments get executed via the system shell, results
4097 and return codes will be subject to its quirks and capabilities.
4098 See L<perlop/"`STRING`"> and L</exec> for details.
4100 =item syswrite FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH,OFFSET
4102 =item syswrite FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH
4104 =item syswrite FILEHANDLE,SCALAR
4106 Attempts to write LENGTH bytes of data from variable SCALAR to the
4107 specified FILEHANDLE, using the system call write(2). If LENGTH is
4108 not specified, writes whole SCALAR. It bypasses
4109 stdio, so mixing this with reads (other than C<sysread())>, C<print()>,
4110 C<write()>, C<seek()>, C<tell()>, or C<eof()> may cause confusion
4111 because stdio usually buffers data. Returns the number of bytes
4112 actually written, or C<undef> if there was an error. If the LENGTH is
4113 greater than the available data in the SCALAR after the OFFSET, only as
4114 much data as is available will be written.
4116 An OFFSET may be specified to write the data from some part of the
4117 string other than the beginning. A negative OFFSET specifies writing
4118 that many bytes counting backwards from the end of the string. In the
4119 case the SCALAR is empty you can use OFFSET but only zero offset.
4121 =item tell FILEHANDLE
4125 Returns the current position for FILEHANDLE. FILEHANDLE may be an
4126 expression whose value gives the name of the actual filehandle. If
4127 FILEHANDLE is omitted, assumes the file last read.
4129 =item telldir DIRHANDLE
4131 Returns the current position of the C<readdir()> routines on DIRHANDLE.
4132 Value may be given to C<seekdir()> to access a particular location in a
4133 directory. Has the same caveats about possible directory compaction as
4134 the corresponding system library routine.
4136 =item tie VARIABLE,CLASSNAME,LIST
4138 This function binds a variable to a package class that will provide the
4139 implementation for the variable. VARIABLE is the name of the variable
4140 to be enchanted. CLASSNAME is the name of a class implementing objects
4141 of correct type. Any additional arguments are passed to the "C<new()>"
4142 method of the class (meaning C<TIESCALAR>, C<TIEHANDLE>, C<TIEARRAY>,
4143 or C<TIEHASH>). Typically these are arguments such as might be passed
4144 to the C<dbm_open()> function of C. The object returned by the "C<new()>"
4145 method is also returned by the C<tie()> function, which would be useful
4146 if you want to access other methods in CLASSNAME.
4148 Note that functions such as C<keys()> and C<values()> may return huge lists
4149 when used on large objects, like DBM files. You may prefer to use the
4150 C<each()> function to iterate over such. Example:
4152 # print out history file offsets
4154 tie(%HIST, 'NDBM_File', '/usr/lib/news/history', 1, 0);
4155 while (($key,$val) = each %HIST) {
4156 print $key, ' = ', unpack('L',$val), "\n";
4160 A class implementing a hash should have the following methods:
4162 TIEHASH classname, LIST
4164 STORE this, key, value
4169 NEXTKEY this, lastkey
4172 A class implementing an ordinary array should have the following methods:
4174 TIEARRAY classname, LIST
4176 STORE this, key, value
4178 STORESIZE this, count
4184 SPLICE this, offset, length, LIST
4188 A class implementing a file handle should have the following methods:
4190 TIEHANDLE classname, LIST
4191 READ this, scalar, length, offset
4194 WRITE this, scalar, length, offset
4196 PRINTF this, format, LIST
4200 A class implementing a scalar should have the following methods:
4202 TIESCALAR classname, LIST
4207 Not all methods indicated above need be implemented. See L<perltie>,
4208 L<Tie::Hash>, L<Tie::Array>, L<Tie::Scalar> and L<Tie::Handle>.
4210 Unlike C<dbmopen()>, the C<tie()> function will not use or require a module
4211 for you--you need to do that explicitly yourself. See L<DB_File>
4212 or the F<Config> module for interesting C<tie()> implementations.
4214 For further details see L<perltie>, L<"tied VARIABLE">.
4218 Returns a reference to the object underlying VARIABLE (the same value
4219 that was originally returned by the C<tie()> call that bound the variable
4220 to a package.) Returns the undefined value if VARIABLE isn't tied to a
4225 Returns the number of non-leap seconds since whatever time the system
4226 considers to be the epoch (that's 00:00:00, January 1, 1904 for MacOS,
4227 and 00:00:00 UTC, January 1, 1970 for most other systems).
4228 Suitable for feeding to C<gmtime()> and C<localtime()>.
4232 Returns a four-element list giving the user and system times, in
4233 seconds, for this process and the children of this process.
4235 ($user,$system,$cuser,$csystem) = times;
4239 The transliteration operator. Same as C<y///>. See L<perlop>.
4241 =item truncate FILEHANDLE,LENGTH
4243 =item truncate EXPR,LENGTH
4245 Truncates the file opened on FILEHANDLE, or named by EXPR, to the
4246 specified length. Produces a fatal error if truncate isn't implemented
4247 on your system. Returns TRUE if successful, the undefined value
4254 Returns an uppercased version of EXPR. This is the internal function
4255 implementing the C<\U> escape in double-quoted strings.
4256 Respects current LC_CTYPE locale if C<use locale> in force. See L<perllocale>.
4257 Under Unicode (C<use utf8>) it uses the standard Unicode uppercase mappings. (It
4258 does not attempt to do titlecase mapping on initial letters. See C<ucfirst()> for that.)
4260 If EXPR is omitted, uses C<$_>.
4266 Returns the value of EXPR with the first character
4267 in uppercase (titlecase in Unicode). This is
4268 the internal function implementing the C<\u> escape in double-quoted strings.
4269 Respects current LC_CTYPE locale if C<use locale> in force. See L<perllocale>.
4271 If EXPR is omitted, uses C<$_>.
4277 Sets the umask for the process to EXPR and returns the previous value.
4278 If EXPR is omitted, merely returns the current umask.
4280 The Unix permission C<rwxr-x---> is represented as three sets of three
4281 bits, or three octal digits: C<0750> (the leading 0 indicates octal
4282 and isn't one of the digits). The C<umask> value is such a number
4283 representing disabled permissions bits. The permission (or "mode")
4284 values you pass C<mkdir> or C<sysopen> are modified by your umask, so
4285 even if you tell C<sysopen> to create a file with permissions C<0777>,
4286 if your umask is C<0022> then the file will actually be created with
4287 permissions C<0755>. If your C<umask> were C<0027> (group can't
4288 write; others can't read, write, or execute), then passing
4289 C<sysopen()> C<0666> would create a file with mode C<0640> (C<0666 &~
4292 Here's some advice: supply a creation mode of C<0666> for regular
4293 files (in C<sysopen()>) and one of C<0777> for directories (in
4294 C<mkdir()>) and executable files. This gives users the freedom of
4295 choice: if they want protected files, they might choose process umasks
4296 of C<022>, C<027>, or even the particularly antisocial mask of C<077>.
4297 Programs should rarely if ever make policy decisions better left to
4298 the user. The exception to this is when writing files that should be
4299 kept private: mail files, web browser cookies, I<.rhosts> files, and
4302 If umask(2) is not implemented on your system and you are trying to
4303 restrict access for I<yourself> (i.e., (EXPR & 0700) > 0), produces a
4304 fatal error at run time. If umask(2) is not implemented and you are
4305 not trying to restrict access for yourself, returns C<undef>.
4307 Remember that a umask is a number, usually given in octal; it is I<not> a
4308 string of octal digits. See also L</oct>, if all you have is a string.
4316 Undefines the value of EXPR, which must be an lvalue. Use only on a
4317 scalar value, an array (using "C<@>"), a hash (using "C<%>"), a subroutine
4318 (using "C<&>"), or a typeglob (using "<*>"). (Saying C<undef $hash{$key}>
4319 will probably not do what you expect on most predefined variables or
4320 DBM list values, so don't do that; see L<delete>.) Always returns the
4321 undefined value. You can omit the EXPR, in which case nothing is
4322 undefined, but you still get an undefined value that you could, for
4323 instance, return from a subroutine, assign to a variable or pass as a
4324 parameter. Examples:
4327 undef $bar{'blurfl'}; # Compare to: delete $bar{'blurfl'};
4331 undef *xyz; # destroys $xyz, @xyz, %xyz, &xyz, etc.
4332 return (wantarray ? (undef, $errmsg) : undef) if $they_blew_it;
4333 select undef, undef, undef, 0.25;
4334 ($a, $b, undef, $c) = &foo; # Ignore third value returned
4336 Note that this is a unary operator, not a list operator.
4342 Deletes a list of files. Returns the number of files successfully
4345 $cnt = unlink 'a', 'b', 'c';
4349 Note: C<unlink()> will not delete directories unless you are superuser and
4350 the B<-U> flag is supplied to Perl. Even if these conditions are
4351 met, be warned that unlinking a directory can inflict damage on your
4352 filesystem. Use C<rmdir()> instead.
4354 If LIST is omitted, uses C<$_>.
4356 =item unpack TEMPLATE,EXPR
4358 C<Unpack()> does the reverse of C<pack()>: it takes a string representing a
4359 structure and expands it out into a list value, returning the array
4360 value. (In scalar context, it returns merely the first value
4361 produced.) The TEMPLATE has the same format as in the C<pack()> function.
4362 Here's a subroutine that does substring:
4365 my($what,$where,$howmuch) = @_;
4366 unpack("x$where a$howmuch", $what);
4371 sub ordinal { unpack("c",$_[0]); } # same as ord()
4373 In addition, you may prefix a field with a %E<lt>numberE<gt> to indicate that
4374 you want a E<lt>numberE<gt>-bit checksum of the items instead of the items
4375 themselves. Default is a 16-bit checksum. For example, the following
4376 computes the same number as the System V sum program:
4379 $checksum += unpack("%32C*", $_);
4383 The following efficiently counts the number of set bits in a bit vector:
4385 $setbits = unpack("%32b*", $selectmask);
4387 See L</pack> for more examples.
4389 =item untie VARIABLE
4391 Breaks the binding between a variable and a package. (See C<tie()>.)
4393 =item unshift ARRAY,LIST
4395 Does the opposite of a C<shift()>. Or the opposite of a C<push()>,
4396 depending on how you look at it. Prepends list to the front of the
4397 array, and returns the new number of elements in the array.
4399 unshift(ARGV, '-e') unless $ARGV[0] =~ /^-/;
4401 Note the LIST is prepended whole, not one element at a time, so the
4402 prepended elements stay in the same order. Use C<reverse()> to do the
4405 =item use Module LIST
4409 =item use Module VERSION LIST
4413 Imports some semantics into the current package from the named module,
4414 generally by aliasing certain subroutine or variable names into your
4415 package. It is exactly equivalent to
4417 BEGIN { require Module; import Module LIST; }
4419 except that Module I<must> be a bareword.
4421 If the first argument to C<use> is a number, it is treated as a version
4422 number instead of a module name. If the version of the Perl interpreter
4423 is less than VERSION, then an error message is printed and Perl exits
4424 immediately. This is often useful if you need to check the current
4425 Perl version before C<use>ing library modules that have changed in
4426 incompatible ways from older versions of Perl. (We try not to do
4427 this more than we have to.)
4429 The C<BEGIN> forces the C<require> and C<import()> to happen at compile time. The
4430 C<require> makes sure the module is loaded into memory if it hasn't been
4431 yet. The C<import()> is not a builtin--it's just an ordinary static method
4432 call into the "C<Module>" package to tell the module to import the list of
4433 features back into the current package. The module can implement its
4434 C<import()> method any way it likes, though most modules just choose to
4435 derive their C<import()> method via inheritance from the C<Exporter> class that
4436 is defined in the C<Exporter> module. See L<Exporter>. If no C<import()>
4437 method can be found then the error is currently silently ignored. This
4438 may change to a fatal error in a future version.
4440 If you don't want your namespace altered, explicitly supply an empty list:
4444 That is exactly equivalent to
4446 BEGIN { require Module }
4448 If the VERSION argument is present between Module and LIST, then the
4449 C<use> will call the VERSION method in class Module with the given
4450 version as an argument. The default VERSION method, inherited from
4451 the Universal class, croaks if the given version is larger than the
4452 value of the variable C<$Module::VERSION>. (Note that there is not a
4453 comma after VERSION!)
4455 Because this is a wide-open interface, pragmas (compiler directives)
4456 are also implemented this way. Currently implemented pragmas are:
4460 use sigtrap qw(SEGV BUS);
4461 use strict qw(subs vars refs);
4462 use subs qw(afunc blurfl);
4464 Some of these these pseudo-modules import semantics into the current
4465 block scope (like C<strict> or C<integer>, unlike ordinary modules,
4466 which import symbols into the current package (which are effective
4467 through the end of the file).
4469 There's a corresponding "C<no>" command that unimports meanings imported
4470 by C<use>, i.e., it calls C<unimport Module LIST> instead of C<import()>.
4475 If no C<unimport()> method can be found the call fails with a fatal error.
4477 See L<perlmod> for a list of standard modules and pragmas.
4481 Changes the access and modification times on each file of a list of
4482 files. The first two elements of the list must be the NUMERICAL access
4483 and modification times, in that order. Returns the number of files
4484 successfully changed. The inode modification time of each file is set
4485 to the current time. This code has the same effect as the "C<touch>"
4486 command if the files already exist:
4490 utime $now, $now, @ARGV;
4494 Returns a list consisting of all the values of the named hash. (In a
4495 scalar context, returns the number of values.) The values are
4496 returned in an apparently random order. The actual random order is
4497 subject to change in future versions of perl, but it is guaranteed to
4498 be the same order as either the C<keys()> or C<each()> function would
4499 produce on the same (unmodified) hash.
4501 As a side effect, it resets HASH's iterator. See also C<keys()>, C<each()>,
4504 =item vec EXPR,OFFSET,BITS
4506 Treats the string in EXPR as a vector of unsigned integers, and
4507 returns the value of the bit field specified by OFFSET. BITS specifies
4508 the number of bits that are reserved for each entry in the bit
4509 vector. This must be a power of two from 1 to 32. C<vec()> may also be
4510 assigned to, in which case parentheses are needed to give the expression
4511 the correct precedence as in
4513 vec($image, $max_x * $x + $y, 8) = 3;
4515 Vectors created with C<vec()> can also be manipulated with the logical
4516 operators C<|>, C<&>, and C<^>, which will assume a bit vector operation is
4517 desired when both operands are strings.
4519 The following code will build up an ASCII string saying C<'PerlPerlPerl'>.
4520 The comments show the string after each step. Note that this code works
4521 in the same way on big-endian or little-endian machines.
4524 vec($foo, 0, 32) = 0x5065726C; # 'Perl'
4525 vec($foo, 2, 16) = 0x5065; # 'PerlPe'
4526 vec($foo, 3, 16) = 0x726C; # 'PerlPerl'
4527 vec($foo, 8, 8) = 0x50; # 'PerlPerlP'
4528 vec($foo, 9, 8) = 0x65; # 'PerlPerlPe'
4529 vec($foo, 20, 4) = 2; # 'PerlPerlPe' . "\x02"
4530 vec($foo, 21, 4) = 7; # 'PerlPerlPer'
4532 vec($foo, 45, 2) = 3; # 'PerlPerlPer' . "\x0c"
4533 vec($foo, 93, 1) = 1; # 'PerlPerlPer' . "\x2c"
4534 vec($foo, 94, 1) = 1; # 'PerlPerlPerl'
4537 To transform a bit vector into a string or array of 0's and 1's, use these:
4539 $bits = unpack("b*", $vector);
4540 @bits = split(//, unpack("b*", $vector));
4542 If you know the exact length in bits, it can be used in place of the C<*>.
4546 Waits for a child process to terminate and returns the pid of the
4547 deceased process, or C<-1> if there are no child processes. The status is
4548 returned in C<$?>. Note that a return value of C<-1> could mean that
4549 child processes are being automatically reaped, as described in L<perlipc>.
4551 =item waitpid PID,FLAGS
4553 Waits for a particular child process to terminate and returns the pid
4554 of the deceased process, or C<-1> if there is no such child process. The
4555 status is returned in C<$?>. If you say
4557 use POSIX ":sys_wait_h";
4559 waitpid(-1,&WNOHANG);
4561 then you can do a non-blocking wait for any process. Non-blocking wait
4562 is available on machines supporting either the waitpid(2) or
4563 wait4(2) system calls. However, waiting for a particular pid with
4564 FLAGS of C<0> is implemented everywhere. (Perl emulates the system call
4565 by remembering the status values of processes that have exited but have
4566 not been harvested by the Perl script yet.)
4568 Note that a return value of C<-1> could mean that child processes are being
4569 automatically reaped. See L<perlipc> for details, and for other examples.
4573 Returns TRUE if the context of the currently executing subroutine is
4574 looking for a list value. Returns FALSE if the context is looking
4575 for a scalar. Returns the undefined value if the context is looking
4576 for no value (void context).
4578 return unless defined wantarray; # don't bother doing more
4579 my @a = complex_calculation();
4580 return wantarray ? @a : "@a";
4584 Produces a message on STDERR just like C<die()>, but doesn't exit or throw
4587 If LIST is empty and C<$@> already contains a value (typically from a
4588 previous eval) that value is used after appending C<"\t...caught">
4589 to C<$@>. This is useful for staying almost, but not entirely similar to
4592 If C<$@> is empty then the string C<"Warning: Something's wrong"> is used.
4594 No message is printed if there is a C<$SIG{__WARN__}> handler
4595 installed. It is the handler's responsibility to deal with the message
4596 as it sees fit (like, for instance, converting it into a C<die()>). Most
4597 handlers must therefore make arrangements to actually display the
4598 warnings that they are not prepared to deal with, by calling C<warn()>
4599 again in the handler. Note that this is quite safe and will not
4600 produce an endless loop, since C<__WARN__> hooks are not called from
4603 You will find this behavior is slightly different from that of
4604 C<$SIG{__DIE__}> handlers (which don't suppress the error text, but can
4605 instead call C<die()> again to change it).
4607 Using a C<__WARN__> handler provides a powerful way to silence all
4608 warnings (even the so-called mandatory ones). An example:
4610 # wipe out *all* compile-time warnings
4611 BEGIN { $SIG{'__WARN__'} = sub { warn $_[0] if $DOWARN } }
4613 my $foo = 20; # no warning about duplicate my $foo,
4614 # but hey, you asked for it!
4615 # no compile-time or run-time warnings before here
4618 # run-time warnings enabled after here
4619 warn "\$foo is alive and $foo!"; # does show up
4621 See L<perlvar> for details on setting C<%SIG> entries, and for more
4624 =item write FILEHANDLE
4630 Writes a formatted record (possibly multi-line) to the specified FILEHANDLE,
4631 using the format associated with that file. By default the format for
4632 a file is the one having the same name as the filehandle, but the
4633 format for the current output channel (see the C<select()> function) may be set
4634 explicitly by assigning the name of the format to the C<$~> variable.
4636 Top of form processing is handled automatically: if there is
4637 insufficient room on the current page for the formatted record, the
4638 page is advanced by writing a form feed, a special top-of-page format
4639 is used to format the new page header, and then the record is written.
4640 By default the top-of-page format is the name of the filehandle with
4641 "_TOP" appended, but it may be dynamically set to the format of your
4642 choice by assigning the name to the C<$^> variable while the filehandle is
4643 selected. The number of lines remaining on the current page is in
4644 variable C<$->, which can be set to C<0> to force a new page.
4646 If FILEHANDLE is unspecified, output goes to the current default output
4647 channel, which starts out as STDOUT but may be changed by the
4648 C<select()> operator. If the FILEHANDLE is an EXPR, then the expression
4649 is evaluated and the resulting string is used to look up the name of
4650 the FILEHANDLE at run time. For more on formats, see L<perlform>.
4652 Note that write is I<NOT> the opposite of C<read()>. Unfortunately.
4656 The transliteration operator. Same as C<tr///>. See L<perlop>.