=head1 NAME
perldoc - Look up Perl documentation in Pod format.
=head1 SYNOPSIS
perldoc [-h] [-D] [-t] [-u] [-m] [-l] [-U] [-F]
[-i] [-V] [-T] [-r]
[-d destination_file]
[-o formatname]
[-M FormatterClassName]
[-w formatteroption:value]
[-n nroff-replacement]
[-X]
[-L language_code]
PageName|ModuleName|ProgramName|URL
Examples:
perldoc -f BuiltinFunction
perldoc -L it -f BuiltinFunction
perldoc -q FAQ Keyword
perldoc -L fr -q FAQ Keyword
perldoc -v PerlVariable
perldoc -a PerlAPI
See below for more description of the switches.
=head1 DESCRIPTION
B looks up documentation in .pod format that is embedded in the perl
installation tree or in a perl script, and displays it using a variety of
formatters. 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.
If you are looking for a table of contents to the Perl library modules
documentation, see the L page.
=head1 OPTIONS
=over 5
=item B<-h>
Prints out a brief Belp message.
=item B<-D>
Bescribes search for the item in Betail.
=item B<-t>
Display docs using plain Bext converter, instead of nroff. This may be faster,
but it probably won't look as nice.
=item B<-u>
Skip the real Pod formatting, and just show the raw Pod source (Bnformatted)
=item B<-m> I
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.
=item B<-l>
Display onBy the file name of the module found.
=item B<-U>
When running as the superuser, don't attempt drop privileges for security.
This option is implied with B<-F>.
B: Please see the heading SECURITY below for more information.
=item B<-F>
Consider arguments as file names; no search in directories will be performed.
Implies B<-U> if run as the superuser.
=item B<-f> I
The B<-f> option followed by the name of a perl built-in function will
extract the documentation of this function from L.
Example:
perldoc -f sprintf
=item B<-q> I
The B<-q> option takes a regular expression as an argument. It will search
the Buestion headings in perlfaq[1-9] and print the entries matching
the regular expression.
Example:
perldoc -q shuffle
=item B<-a> I
The B<-a> option followed by the name of a perl api function will
extract the documentation of this function from L.
Example:
perldoc -a newHV
=item B<-v> I
The B<-v> option followed by the name of a Perl predefined variable will
extract the documentation of this variable from L.
Examples:
perldoc -v '$"'
perldoc -v @+
perldoc -v DATA
=item B<-T>
This specifies that the output is not to be sent to a pager, but is to
be sent directly to STDOUT.
=item B<-d> I
This specifies that the output is to be sent neither to a pager nor
to STDOUT, but is to be saved to the specified filename. Example:
C
=item B<-o> I
This specifies that you want Perldoc to try using a Pod-formatting
class for the output format that you specify. For example:
C<-oman>. This is actually just a wrapper around the C<-M> switch;
using C<-oI> just looks for a loadable class by adding
that format name (with different capitalizations) to the end of
different classname prefixes.
For example, C<-oLaTeX> currently tries all of the following classes:
Pod::Perldoc::ToLaTeX Pod::Perldoc::Tolatex Pod::Perldoc::ToLatex
Pod::Perldoc::ToLATEX Pod::Simple::LaTeX Pod::Simple::latex
Pod::Simple::Latex Pod::Simple::LATEX Pod::LaTeX Pod::latex Pod::Latex
Pod::LATEX.
=item B<-M> I
This specifies the module that you want to try using for formatting the
pod. The class must at least provide a C method.
For example: C.
You can specify several classes to try by joining them with commas
or semicolons, as in C<-MTk::SuperPod;Tk::Pod>.
=item B<-w> I or B<-w> I