perldoc(1)

NAME

       perldoc - Look up Perl documentation in pod format.

SYNOPSIS

       perldoc [-h] [-v] [-t] [-u] [-m] [-l] [-F]  [-X] PageName|Module-
       Name|ProgramName

       perldoc -f BuiltinFunction

       perldoc -q FAQ Keyword

DESCRIPTION

       perldoc looks up a piece of documentation in .pod format that is embed-
       ded 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 documen-
       tation 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.

       If you are looking for a table of contents to the Perl library modules
       documentation, see the perltoc page.

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 documen-
            tation.  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 file names
            Consider arguments as file names, no search in directories will be
            performed.

       -f perlfunc
            The -f option followed by the name of a perl built in function
            will extract the documentation of this function from perlfunc.

       -q perlfaq
            The -q option takes a regular expression as an argument.  It will
            search the question headings in perlfaq[1-9] and print the entries
            matching the regular expression.

       -X use an index if present
            The -X option looks for an entry whose basename matches the name
            given on the command line in the file "$Config{archlib}/pod.idx".
            The pod.idx file should contain fully qualified filenames, one per
            line.

       -U run insecurely
            Because perldoc does not run properly tainted, and is known to
            have security issues, it will not normally execute as the supe-
            ruser.  If you use the -U flag, it will do so, but only after set-
            ting the effective and real IDs to nobody's or nouser's account,
            or -2 if unavailable.  If it cannot relinquish its privileges, it
            will not run.

       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".

ENVIRONMENT

       Any switches in the "PERLDOC" environment variable will be used before
       the command line arguments.  "perldoc" also searches directories speci-
       fied 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.)  "perldoc" will
       use, in order of preference, the pager defined in "PERLDOC_PAGER",
       "MANPAGER", or "PAGER" before trying to find a pager on its own.
       ("MANPAGER" is not used if "perldoc" was told to display plain text or
       unformatted pod.)

       One useful value for "PERLDOC_PAGER" is "less -+C -E".

VERSION

       This is perldoc v2.03.

AUTHOR

       Kenneth Albanowski <kjahds@kjahds.com>

       Minor updates by Andy Dougherty <doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu>, and
       others.

perl v5.8.0                       2002-12-08                        PERLDOC(1)