PERLDOC(1) PERLDOC(1)
NAME
perldoc - Look up Perl documentation in pod format.
SYNOPSIS
perldoc [-h] [-v] [-t] [-u] [-m] [-l] PageName|ModuleName|ProgramName
perldoc -f BuiltinFunction
DESCRIPTION
perldoc looks up a piece of documentation in .pod format that is embedded
in the perl installation tree or in a perl script, and displays it via
pod2man | nroff -man | $PAGER. (In addition, if running under HP-UX, col
-x will be used.) This is primarily used for the documentation for the
perl library modules.
Your system may also have man pages installed for those modules, in which
case you can probably just use the man(1) command.
OPTIONS
-h help
Prints out a brief help message.
-v verbose
Describes search for the item in detail.
-t text output
Display docs using plain text converter, instead of nroff. This may
be faster, but it won't look as nice.
-u unformatted
Find docs only; skip reformatting by pod2*
-m module
Display the entire module: both code and unformatted pod
documentation. This may be useful if the docs don't explain a
function in the detail you need, and you'd like to inspect the code
directly; perldoc will find the file for you and simply hand it off
for display.
-l file name only
Display the file name of the module found.
-f perlfunc
The -f option followed by the name of a perl built in function will
extract the documentation of this function from the perlfunc
manpage.
PageName|ModuleName|ProgramName
The item you want to look up. Nested modules (such as
File::Basename) are specified either as File::Basename or
File/Basename. You may also give a descriptive name of a page, such
as perlfunc. You make also give a partial or wrong-case name, such
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PERLDOC(1) PERLDOC(1)
as "basename" for "File::Basename", but this will be slower, if
there is more then one page with the same partial name, you will
only get the first one.
ENVIRONMENT
Any switches in the PERLDOC environment variable will be used before the
command line arguments. perldoc also searches directories specified by
the PERL5LIB (or PERLLIB if PERL5LIB is not defined) and PATH environment
variables. (The latter is so that embedded pods for executables, such as
perldoc itself, are available.)
AUTHOR
Kenneth Albanowski <kjahds@kjahds.com>
Minor updates by Andy Dougherty <doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu>
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