This document gives a short blurb about each of the Perl documents and document groups. It is meant to make it easier to locate which document cover areas of interest to you. You can print any of these documents by running the command 'perldoc on a terminal or console window. is the name before each blurb. You can also read and search then at http://perldoc.perl.org. Overview These documents provide an overview of all the Perl documents and an introduction to Perl. perl This document has a brief description of the Perl language and has a list of all the Perl documents with a one line description of each one. perlblurb has the same list with longer descriptions. perlmetadoc This document shows how to find and use the set of Perl documents. It covers the installing and finding the Perl documentation, the various types of documents, and tips and tools on how to best read the documents. perlblurb This document is based on the 'perl' document but has longer descriptions for each document. You are reading it now. perltoc This is an automatically generated document and it contains all the document section headers. It is in outline form and it is best searched as it is very long. It is useful to find which features are covered in a Perl document. perlintro This is a introduction to the Perl language for newcomers. It covers the basics of syntax, variables, scoping, flow control, operators, I/O, regular expressions and objects. It is a very good first read for anyone who is learning Perl. Tutorials The documentation for Perl has a set of tutorials on a wide range of topics. Pretty much any topic where you would want more explanation then the reference documents will be covered in one of these. perlreftut Perl references are the way you build up data structures and manage dynamic information. This tutorial shows you how to create references and to access the data to which they refer. After reading this you should be able to do basic coding with references and build up your own data structures. perllol This tutorial focuses on how to build and use an array of array data structure. It shows several ways to build them and also how to access their elements and print them out. It is a companion to perlreftut and perldsc. perldsc This tutorial covers how to create and access Perl data structures. It is more in depth that perlreftut and perllol and has many code examples which cover all the two level structures of hashes and arrays. Examples show both the declaration and initialization of data structures and also how to build them up with code. perlrequick This is a quick start guide to Perl's regular expressions. It covers the basics of matching strings, regex metacharacters, character class, and more. It also covers the Perl operators and functions which use regexes. It is a very good read when you are first learning regular expressions. perlretut This tutorial covers how to use Perl's regular expressions. It is more in depth than perlrequick and covers more topics. When you are ready, you can then read perlre which is the full regular expression manual. Object Oriented Perl Tutorials These next documents are all tutorials on how to do object oriented programmin in Perl. They cover all the needed topics so you can create you own classes, methods and objects. Read the full reference manuals perlobj and perlmod next to get all the details. Note that there are many modules on CPAN that help with OO coding. Ask someone in the Perl community for more about that. perlboot This tutorial shows step by step how to create a class, methods in a class and how to call those methods. It also covers basic ways to code up constructors which create objects. Before reading this you should know how to write and call Perl subroutines, use references and know your basic Perl syntax and data types. perltoot This is another tutorial which covers how to code up classes and make object oriented code. It take a different approach than perlboot and makes a good companion read to that tutorial. perltooc This tutorial covers how to make class level data when coding object oriented Perl. This is data that is private and static to the class but can be accesses by all the methods of the class. perlbot This is a 'bag of tricks' to help you when coding up object oriented Perl. It augments what is already covered in perlboot, perltoot and perltooc. perlstyle Perl style guide perlcheat Perl cheat sheet perltrap Perl traps for the unwary perldebtut Perl debugging tutorial perlfaq This is an overview of the full Perl FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). It covers where to find it, how to contribute to it and its authors. The main section is a complete list of all the questions of the 9 sections of the FAQ. Reading and searching this will help you find questions related to your needs and which FAQ section has the answers. perlfaq1 The first FAQ section covers general information about Perl. It covers how Perl came to be, who supports it now, some comparisons to other languages, when and when not to use Perl and other related topics. Newcomers to Perl should read this entire section as it will help them out with understanding of where Perl fits in the programming world. perlfaq2 The second FAQ section covers how to get Perl installed on your system and locations where you can learn more about programming in Perl. These include usenet, mailing lists, periodicals, books, web sites and more. If you are looking to learn Perl, this is a good document to read. perlfaq3 Programming Tools perlfaq4 Data Manipulation perlfaq5 Files and Formats perlfaq6 Regexes perlfaq7 Perl Language Issues perlfaq8 System Interaction perlfaq9 Networking Reference Manuals These documents are the full reference manuals for the Perl language. They are divided up into topics and each one covers that topic completely. They are dense and full of information so if you have trouble with something, see if there is a related tutorial on it. Each blurb will link to those tutorials. perlsyn Perl syntax perldata Perl data structures perlop Perl operators and precedence perlsub Perl subroutines perlfunc Perl built-in functions perlopentut Perl open() tutorial perlpacktut Perl pack() and unpack() tutorial perlpod Perl plain old documentation perlpodspec Perl plain old documentation format specification perlrun Perl execution and options perldiag Perl diagnostic messages perllexwarn Perl warnings and their control perldebug Perl debugging perlvar Perl predefined variables perlre Perl regular expressions, the rest of the story perlrebackslash Perl regular expression backslash sequences perlrecharclass Perl regular expression character classes perlreref Perl regular expressions quick reference perlref Perl references, the rest of the story perlform Perl formats perlobj Perl objects perltie Tying is a way to replace all or part of the behavior of a basic Perl variable with your own code. You can write a class that can be a scalar, array or hash variable and the user will just see a normal variable with your new logic behind it. This document covers all you need to know on how to tie a variable to a class. perldbmfilter Perl DBM filters perlipc Perl interprocess communication perlfork Perl fork() information perlnumber Perl number semantics perlthrtut Perl threads tutorial perlothrtut Old Perl threads tutorial perlport Perl portability guide perllocale Perl locale support perluniintro Perl Unicode introduction perlunicode Perl Unicode support perlunifaq Perl Unicode FAQ perlunitut Perl Unicode tutorial perlebcdic Considerations for running Perl on EBCDIC platforms perlsec Perl security perlmod Perl modules: how they work perlmodlib Perl modules: how to write and use perlmodstyle Perl modules: how to write modules with style perlmodinstall Perl modules: how to install from CPAN perlnewmod Perl modules: preparing a new module for distribution perlpragma Perl modules: writing a user pragma perlutil utilities packaged with the Perl distribution perlcompile Perl compiler suite intro perlfilter Perl source filters perlglossary Perl Glossary Internals and C Language Interface perlembed Perl ways to embed perl in your C or C++ application perldebguts Perl debugging guts and tips perlxstut Perl XS tutorial perlxs Perl XS application programming interface perlclib Internal replacements for standard C library functions perlguts Perl internal functions for those doing extensions perlcall Perl calling conventions from C perlreapi Perl regular expression plugin interface perlreguts Perl regular expression engine internals perlapi Perl API listing (autogenerated) perlintern Perl internal functions (autogenerated) perliol C API for Perl's implementation of IO in Layers perlapio Perl internal IO abstraction interface perlhack Perl hackers guide Miscellaneous perlbook Perl book information perlcommunity Perl community information perltodo Perl things to do perldoc Look up Perl documentation in Pod format perlhist This has listings of all the released versions of Perl with information on who was the 'pumpking' (the source control manager), dates, etc. It is of interest to those who want to see how Perl has been managed over its history. These 'delta' documents cover all the changes in Perl between each released version. It is very useful to find out in which version a new feature first appeared and also when some have been deprecated and/or removed. perldelta Perl changes since previous version perl595delta Perl changes in version 5.9.5 perl594delta Perl changes in version 5.9.4 perl593delta Perl changes in version 5.9.3 perl592delta Perl changes in version 5.9.2 perl591delta Perl changes in version 5.9.1 perl590delta Perl changes in version 5.9.0 perl588delta Perl changes in version 5.8.8 perl587delta Perl changes in version 5.8.7 perl586delta Perl changes in version 5.8.6 perl585delta Perl changes in version 5.8.5 perl584delta Perl changes in version 5.8.4 perl583delta Perl changes in version 5.8.3 perl582delta Perl changes in version 5.8.2 perl581delta Perl changes in version 5.8.1 perl58delta Perl changes in version 5.8.0 perl573delta Perl changes in version 5.7.3 perl572delta Perl changes in version 5.7.2 perl571delta Perl changes in version 5.7.1 perl570delta Perl changes in version 5.7.0 perl561delta Perl changes in version 5.6.1 perl56delta Perl changes in version 5.6 perl5005delta Perl changes in version 5.005 perl5004delta Perl changes in version 5.004 perlartistic Perl Artistic License perlgpl GNU General Public License Language-Specific These documents cover the issues when coding Perl with asian character sets. perlcn Perl for Simplified Chinese (in EUC-CN) perljp Perl for Japanese (in EUC-JP) perlko Perl for Korean (in EUC-KR) perltw Perl for Traditional Chinese (in Big5) Platform-Specific These documents contain notes pertaining to specific platforms where Perl is supported. Each document may cover issues such as building Perl on that platform, file name differences, forking issues, and more. Read the document for your platform to find out if you need to be aware of special issues. perlaix Perl notes for AIX perlamiga Perl notes for AmigaOS perlapollo Perl notes for Apollo DomainOS perlbeos Perl notes for BeOS perlbs2000 Perl notes for POSIX-BC BS2000 perlce Perl notes for WinCE perlcygwin Perl notes for Cygwin perldgux Perl notes for DG/UX perldos Perl notes for DOS perlepoc Perl notes for EPOC perlfreebsd Perl notes for FreeBSD perlhpux Perl notes for HP-UX perlhurd Perl notes for Hurd perlirix Perl notes for Irix perllinux Perl notes for Linux perlmachten Perl notes for Power MachTen perlmacos Perl notes for Mac OS (Classic) perlmacosx Perl notes for Mac OS X perlmint Perl notes for MiNT perlmpeix Perl notes for MPE/iX perlnetware Perl notes for NetWare perlopenbsd Perl notes for OpenBSD perlos2 Perl notes for OS/2 perlos390 Perl notes for OS/390 perlos400 Perl notes for OS/400 perlplan9 Perl notes for Plan 9 perlqnx Perl notes for QNX perlriscos Perl notes for RISC OS perlsolaris Perl notes for Solaris perlsymbian Perl notes for Symbian perltru64 Perl notes for Tru64 perluts Perl notes for UTS perlvmesa Perl notes for VM/ESA perlvms Perl notes for VMS perlvos Perl notes for Stratus VOS perlwin32 Perl notes for Windows