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PERLDOC(1)


NAME

  perldoc - Look up Perl documentation in pod format.


SYNOPSIS

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

  perldoc -f BuiltinFunction

  perldoc -q FAQ Keyword


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 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 the perlfunc manpage.

  -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 a 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 superuser.	If
       you use the -U flag, it will do so, but only after setting the
       effective and real IDs to nobody's or nouser's account, or -2 if
       unavailable.  If it cannot relinguish 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". You may also give a partial or wrong-case name, such 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.)  "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.

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