3 perlutil - utilities packaged with the Perl distribution
7 Along with the Perl interpreter itself, the Perl distribution installs a
8 range of utilities on your system. There are also several utilities
9 which are used by the Perl distribution itself as part of the install
10 process. This document exists to list all of these utilities, explain
11 what they are for and provide pointers to each module's documentation,
18 =item L<libnetcfg|libnetcfg>
20 Starting from Perl 5.8 the libnet has been part of the standard
21 distribution. To configure libnet run the libnetcfg command.
23 =item L<perldoc|perldoc>
25 The main interface to Perl's documentation is C<perldoc>, although
26 if you're reading this, it's more than likely that you've already found
27 it. F<perldoc> will extract and format the documentation from any file
28 in the current directory, any Perl module installed on the system, or
29 any of the standard documentation pages, such as this one. Use
30 C<perldoc E<lt>nameE<gt>> to get information on any of the utilities
31 described in this document.
33 =item L<pod2man|pod2man> and L<pod2text|pod2text>
35 If it's run from a terminal, F<perldoc> will usually call F<pod2man> to
36 translate POD (Plain Old Documentation - see L<perlpod> for an
37 explanation) into a manpage, and then run F<man> to display it; if
38 F<man> isn't available, F<pod2text> will be used instead and the output
39 piped through your favourite pager.
41 =item L<pod2html|pod2html> and L<pod2latex|pod2latex>
43 As well as these two, there are two other converters: F<pod2html> will
44 produce HTML pages from POD, and F<pod2latex>, which produces LaTeX
47 =item L<pod2usage|pod2usage>
49 If you just want to know how to use the utilities described here,
50 F<pod2usage> will just extract the "USAGE" section; some of
51 the utilities will automatically call F<pod2usage> on themselves when
52 you call them with C<-help>.
54 =item L<podselect|podselect>
56 F<pod2usage> is a special case of F<podselect>, a utility to extract
57 named sections from documents written in POD. For instance, while
58 utilities have "USAGE" sections, Perl modules usually have "SYNOPSIS"
59 sections: C<podselect -s "SYNOPSIS" ...> will extract this section for
62 =item L<podchecker|podchecker>
64 If you're writing your own documentation in POD, the F<podchecker>
65 utility will look for errors in your markup.
67 =item L<splain|splain>
69 F<splain> is an interface to L<perldiag> - paste in your error message
70 to it, and it'll explain it for you.
72 =item L<roffitall|roffitall>
74 The C<roffitall> utility is not installed on your system but lives in
75 the F<pod/> directory of your Perl source kit; it converts all the
76 documentation from the distribution to F<*roff> format, and produces a
77 typeset PostScript or text file of the whole lot.
83 To help you convert legacy programs to Perl, we've included three
90 F<a2p> converts F<awk> scripts to Perl programs; for example, C<a2p -F:>
91 on the simple F<awk> script C<{print $2}> will produce a Perl program
92 based around this code:
95 ($Fld1,$Fld2) = split(/[:\n]/, $_, 9999);
101 Similarly, F<s2p> converts F<sed> scripts to Perl programs. F<s2p> run
102 on C<s/foo/bar> will produce a Perl program based around this:
110 =item L<find2perl|find2perl>
112 Finally, F<find2perl> translates C<find> commands to Perl equivalents which
113 use the L<File::Find|File::Find> module. As an example,
114 C<find2perl . -user root -perm 4000 -print> produces the following callback
115 subroutine for C<File::Find>:
118 my ($dev,$ino,$mode,$nlink,$uid,$gid);
119 (($dev,$ino,$mode,$nlink,$uid,$gid) = lstat($_)) &&
120 $uid == $uid{'root'}) &&
121 (($mode & 0777) == 04000);
127 As well as these filters for converting other languages, the
128 L<pl2pm|pl2pm> utility will help you convert old-style Perl 4 libraries to
129 new-style Perl5 modules.
133 There are a set of utilities which help you in developing Perl programs,
134 and in particular, extending Perl with C.
138 =item L<perlbug|perlbug>
140 F<perlbug> is the recommended way to report bugs in the perl interpreter
141 itself or any of the standard library modules back to the developers;
142 please read through the documentation for F<perlbug> thoroughly before
143 using it to submit a bug report.
147 Back before Perl had the XS system for connecting with C libraries,
148 programmers used to get library constants by reading through the C
149 header files. You may still see C<require 'syscall.ph'> or similar
150 around - the F<.ph> file should be created by running F<h2ph> on the
151 corresponding F<.h> file. See the F<h2ph> documentation for more on how
152 to convert a whole bunch of header files at once.
154 =item L<c2ph|c2ph> and L<pstruct|pstruct>
156 F<c2ph> and F<pstruct>, which are actually the same program but behave
157 differently depending on how they are called, provide another way of
158 getting at C with Perl - they'll convert C structures and union declarations
159 to Perl code. This is deprecated in favour of F<h2xs> these days.
163 F<h2xs> converts C header files into XS modules, and will try and write
164 as much glue between C libraries and Perl modules as it can. It's also
165 very useful for creating skeletons of pure Perl modules.
167 =item L<dprofpp|dprofpp>
169 Perl comes with a profiler, the F<Devel::Dprof> module. The
170 F<dprofpp> utility analyzes the output of this profiler and tells you
171 which subroutines are taking up the most run time. See L<Devel::Dprof>
172 for more information.
174 =item L<perlcc|perlcc>
176 F<perlcc> is the interface to the experimental Perl compiler suite.
182 L<perldoc|perldoc>, L<pod2man|pod2man>, L<perlpod>,
183 L<pod2html|pod2html>, L<pod2usage|pod2usage>, L<podselect|podselect>,
184 L<podchecker|podchecker>, L<splain|splain>, L<perldiag>,
185 L<roffitall|roffitall>, L<a2p|a2p>, L<s2p|s2p>, L<find2perl|find2perl>,
186 L<File::Find|File::Find>, L<pl2pm|pl2pm>, L<perlbug|perlbug>,
187 L<h2ph|h2ph>, L<c2ph|c2ph>, L<h2xs|h2xs>, L<dprofpp|dprofpp>,
188 L<Devel::Dprof>, L<perlcc|perlcc>