runs the program under the Perl debugger. See L<perldebug>.
-=item B<-d:>I<foo>
+=item B<-d:>I<foo[=bar,baz]>
runs the program under the control of a debugging, profiling, or
tracing module installed as Devel::foo. E.g., B<-d:DProf> executes
-the program using the Devel::DProf profiler. See L<perldebug>.
+the program using the Devel::DProf profiler. As with the B<-M>
+flag, options may be passed to the Devel::foo package where they
+will be received and interpreted by the Devel::foo::import routine.
+The comma-separated list of options must follow a C<=> character.
+See L<perldebug>.
=item B<-D>I<letters>
8 t Trace execution
16 o Method and overloading resolution
32 c String/numeric conversions
- 64 P Print preprocessor command for -P
+ 64 P Print preprocessor command for -P, source file input state
128 m Memory allocation
256 f Format processing
512 r Regular expression parsing and execution
16384 X Scratchpad allocation
32768 D Cleaning up
65536 S Thread synchronization
+ 131072 T Tokenising
+ 262144 R Include reference counts of dumped variables (eg when using -Ds)
All these flags require B<-DDEBUGGING> when you compile the Perl
executable. See the F<INSTALL> file in the Perl source distribution
with the next one (if it exists).
For a discussion of issues surrounding file permissions and B<-i>,
-see L<perlfaq5/Why does Perl let me delete read-only files? Why
-does -i clobber protected files? Isn't this a bug in Perl?>.
+see L<perlfaq5/Why does Perl let me delete read-only files? Why does -i clobber protected files? Isn't this a bug in Perl?>.
You cannot use B<-i> to create directories or to strip extensions from
files.
=item B<-P>
causes your program to be run through the C preprocessor before
-compilation by Perl. (Because both comments and B<cpp> directives begin
+compilation by Perl. Because both comments and B<cpp> directives begin
with the # character, you should avoid starting comments with any words
-recognized by the C preprocessor such as "if", "else", or "define".)
+recognized by the C preprocessor such as C<"if">, C<"else">, or C<"define">.
+Also, in some platforms the C preprocessor knows too much: it knows
+about the C++ -style until-end-of-line comments starting with C<"//">.
+This will cause problems with common Perl constructs like
+
+ s/foo//;
+
+because after -P this will became illegal code
+
+ s/foo
+
+The workaround is to use some other quoting separator than C<"/">,
+like for example C<"!">:
+
+ s!foo!!;
=item B<-s>
enables rudimentary switch parsing for switches on the command
line after the program name but before any filename arguments (or before
-a B<-->). Any switch found there is removed from @ARGV and sets the
+an argument of B<-->). This means you can have switches with two leading
+dashes (B<--help>). Any switch found there is removed from @ARGV and sets the
corresponding variable in the Perl program. The following program
-prints "true" if and only if the program is invoked with a B<-xyz> switch.
+prints "1" if the program is invoked with a B<-xyz> switch, and "abc"
+if it is invoked with B<-xyz=abc>.
#!/usr/bin/perl -s
- if ($xyz) { print "true\n" }
+ if ($xyz) { print "$xyz\n" }
+
+Do note that B<--help> creates the variable ${-help}, which is not compliant
+with C<strict refs>.
=item B<-S>
C<__WARN__> hooks, as described in L<perlvar> and L<perlfunc/warn>.
See also L<perldiag> and L<perltrap>. A new, fine-grained warning
facility is also available if you want to manipulate entire classes
-of warnings; see L<warnings> (or better yet, its source code) about
-that.
+of warnings; see L<warnings> or L<perllexwarn>.
=item B<-W>
-Enables all warnings regardless of
+Enables all warnings regardless of C<no warnings> or C<$^W>.
See L<perllexwarn>.
=item B<-X>
-Disables all warnings regardless of
+Disables all warnings regardless of C<use warnings> or C<$^W>.
See L<perllexwarn>.
=item B<-x> I<directory>
Relevant only if your perl executable was built with B<-DDEBUGGING>,
this controls the behavior of global destruction of objects and other
-references.
+references. See L<perlhack/PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL> for more information.
+
+=item PERL_ROOT (specific to the VMS port)
+
+A translation concealed rooted logical name that contains perl and the
+logical device for the @INC path on VMS only. Other logical names that
+affect perl on VMS include PERLSHR, PERL_ENV_TABLES, and
+SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL but are optional and discussed further in
+L<perlvms> and in F<README.vms> in the Perl source distribution.
+
+=item SYS$LOGIN (specific to the VMS port)
+
+Used if chdir has no argument and HOME and LOGDIR are not set.
=back