


PERLDOC(1)       Perl Programmers Reference Guide      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



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PERLDOC(1)       Perl Programmers Reference Guide      PERLDOC(1)


            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.

       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 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.)

AUTHOR
       Kenneth Albanowski <kjahds@kjahds.com>

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













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