perlfunc Perl builtin functions
perlvar Perl predefined variables
perlsub Perl subroutines
- perlmod Perl modules
+ perlmod Perl modules: how they work
+ perlmodlib Perl modules: how to write and use
perlform Perl formats
perllocale Perl locale support
- perlref Perl references
+ perlref Perl references
perldsc Perl data structures intro
perllol Perl data structures: lists of lists
perltoot Perl OO tutorial
perlpod Perl plain old documentation
perlbook Perl book information
- perlembed Perl how to embed perl in your C or C++ app
+ perlembed Perl ways to embed perl in your C or C++ application
perlapio Perl internal IO abstraction interface
perlxs Perl XS application programming interface
perlxstut Perl XS tutorial
- perlguts Perl internal functions for those doing extensions
+ perlguts Perl internal functions for those doing extensions
perlcall Perl calling conventions from C
+ perlhist Perl history records
+
(If you're intending to read these straight through for the first time,
the suggested order will tend to reduce the number of forward references.)
By default, all of the above manpages are installed in the
F</usr/local/man/> directory.
-Extensive additional documentation for Perl modules is available, and
-it's B<important> to note that the default configuration for perl will
-place this additional documentation in the F</usr/local/lib/perl5/man>
-directory, or in the directory named B<"man">, inside the default perl
-library directory, also known as C<@INC>.
-
-Some of this additional documentation is distributed standard with
-Perl, but you'll also find documentation for third-party modules there.
-You should be able to view this with your man(1) program by including
-the proper directories in the appropriate start-up files, or simply in
-the UNIX environment variable, $MANPATH. To find out where the
-configuration has installed these additional sections, type:
+Extensive additional documentation for Perl modules is available. The
+default configuration for perl will place this additional documentation
+in the F</usr/local/lib/perl5/man> directory (or else in the F<man>
+subdirectory of the Perl library directory). Some of this additional
+documentation is distributed standard with Perl, but you'll also find
+documentation for third-party modules there.
- perl -V:man3dir
-
-for the location of the default manpages, type:
+You should be able to view Perl's documentation with your man(1)
+program by including the proper directories in the appropriate start-up
+files, or in the MANPATH environment variable. To find out where the
+configuration has installed the manpages, type:
perl -V:man.dir
-If the directories were F</usr/local/man/man1> and F</usr/local/man/man3>,
-you would need to add only F</usr/local/man> to your MANPATH. If
-they are different, you'll have to add both stems.
+If the directories have a common stem, such as F</usr/local/man/man1>
+and F</usr/local/man/man3>, you need only to add that stem
+(F</usr/local/man>) to your man(1) configuration files or your MANPATH
+environment variable. If they do not share a stem, you'll have to add
+both stems.
If that doesn't work for some reason, you can still use the
supplied F<perldoc> script to view module information. You might
Perl variables may now be declared within a lexical scope, like "auto"
variables in C. Not only is this more efficient, but it contributes
-to better privacy for "programming in the large". Anonymous
+to better privacy for "programming in the large". Anonymous
subroutines exhibit deep binding of lexical variables (closures).
=item * Arbitrarily nested data structures
=item * Regular expression enhancements
-You can now specify non-greedy quantifiers. You can now do grouping
+You can now specify nongreedy quantifiers. You can now do grouping
without creating a backreference. You can now write regular expressions
with embedded whitespace and comments for readability. A consistent
extensibility mechanism has been added that is upwardly compatible with
=item * Innumerable Unbundled Modules
-The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network described in L<perlmod>
-contains hundreds of plug-and-play modules full of reusable
-code. See F<http://www.perl.com/CPAN> for a site near you.
+The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network described in L<perlmodlib>
+contains hundreds of plug-and-play modules full of reusable code.
+See F<http://www.perl.com/CPAN> for a site near you.
=item * Compilability
While not yet in full production mode, a working perl-to-C compiler
-does exist. It can generate portable bytecode, simple C, or
+does exist. It can generate portable byte code, simple C, or
optimized C code.
=back
Larry Wall <F<larry@wall.org>>, with the help of oodles of other folks.
+If your Perl success stories and testimonials may be of help to others
+who wish to advocate the use of Perl in their applications,
+or if you wish to simply express your gratitude to Larry and the
+Perl developers, please write to <F<perl-thanks@perl.org>>.
+
=head1 FILES
"/tmp/perl-e$$" temporary file for -e commands
The B<-w> switch is not mandatory.
Perl is at the mercy of your machine's definitions of various
-operations such as type casting, atof(), and sprintf(). The latter
-can even trigger a core dump when passed ludicrous input values.
+operations such as type casting, atof(), and floating-point
+output with sprintf().
If your stdio requires a seek or eof between reads and writes on a
particular stream, so does Perl. (This doesn't apply to sysread()
projects / p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git / blobdiff