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- =head1 NAME
-
- perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language
-
- =head1 SYNOPSIS
-
- B<perl> S<[ B<-sTuU> ]> S<[ B<-hv> ] [ B<-V>[:I<configvar>] ]>
- S<[ B<-cw> ] [ B<-d>[:I<debugger>] ] [ B<-D>[I<number/list>] ]>
- S<[ B<-pna> ] [ B<-F>I<pattern> ] [ B<-l>[I<octal>] ] [ B<-0>[I<octal>] ]>
- S<[ B<-I>I<dir> ] [ B<-m>[B<->]I<module> ] [ B<-M>[B<->]I<'module...'> ]>
- S<[ B<-P> ]> S<[ B<-S> ]> S<[ B<-x>[I<dir>] ]>
- S<[ B<-i>[I<extension>] ]> S<[ B<-e> I<'command'> ]
- [ B<--> ] [ I<programfile> ] [ I<argument> ]...>
-
- For ease of access, the Perl manual has been split up into several
- sections:
-
- perl Perl overview (this section)
- perldelta Perl changes since previous version
- perl5005delta Perl changes in version 5.005
- perl5004delta Perl changes in version 5.004
- perlfaq Perl frequently asked questions
- perltoc Perl documentation table of contents
-
- perldata Perl data structures
- perlsyn Perl syntax
- perlop Perl operators and precedence
- perlre Perl regular expressions
- perlrun Perl execution and options
- perlfunc Perl builtin functions
- perlopentut Perl open() tutorial
- perlvar Perl predefined variables
- perlsub Perl subroutines
- perlmod Perl modules: how they work
- perlmodlib Perl modules: how to write and use
- perlmodinstall Perl modules: how to install from CPAN
- perlform Perl formats
- perlunicode Perl unicode support
- perllocale Perl locale support
-
- perlreftut Perl references short introduction
- perlref Perl references, the rest of the story
- perldsc Perl data structures intro
- perllol Perl data structures: arrays of arrays
- perlboot Perl OO tutorial for beginners
- perltoot Perl OO tutorial, part 1
- perltootc Perl OO tutorial, part 2
- perlobj Perl objects
- perltie Perl objects hidden behind simple variables
- perlbot Perl OO tricks and examples
- perlipc Perl interprocess communication
- perlfork Perl fork() information
- perlthrtut Perl threads tutorial
- perllexwarn Perl warnings and their control
- perlfilter Perl source filters
- perldbmfilter Perl DBM filters
-
- perlcompile Perl compiler suite intro
- perldebug Perl debugging
- perldiag Perl diagnostic messages
- perlnumber Perl number semantics
- perlsec Perl security
- perltrap Perl traps for the unwary
- perlport Perl portability guide
- perlstyle Perl style guide
-
- perlpod Perl plain old documentation
- perlbook Perl book information
-
- perlembed Perl ways to embed perl in your C or C++ application
- perlapio Perl internal IO abstraction interface
- perldebguts Perl debugging guts and tips
- perlxs Perl XS application programming interface
- perlxstut Perl XS tutorial
- perlguts Perl internal functions for those doing extensions
- perlcall Perl calling conventions from C
- perlapi Perl API listing (autogenerated)
- perlintern Perl internal functions (autogenerated)
-
- perltodo Perl things to do
- perlhack Perl hackers guide
- perlhist Perl history records
-
- perlamiga Perl notes for Amiga
- perlcygwin Perl notes for Cygwin
- perldos Perl notes for DOS
- perlhpux Perl notes for HP-UX
- perlmachten Perl notes for Power MachTen
- perlos2 Perl notes for OS/2
- perlos390 Perl notes for OS/390
- perlvms Perl notes for VMS
- perlwin32 Perl notes for Windows
-
- (If you're intending to read these straight through for the first time,
- the suggested order will tend to reduce the number of forward references.)
-
- By default, the manpages listed above are installed in the
- F</usr/local/man/> directory.
-
- Extensive additional documentation for Perl modules is available. The
- default configuration for perl will place this additional documentation
- in the F</usr/local/lib/perl5/man> directory (or else in the F<man>
- subdirectory of the Perl library directory). Some of this additional
- documentation is distributed standard with Perl, but you'll also find
- documentation for third-party modules there.
-
- You should be able to view Perl's documentation with your man(1)
- program by including the proper directories in the appropriate start-up
- files, or in the MANPATH environment variable. To find out where the
- configuration has installed the manpages, type:
-
- perl -V:man.dir
-
- If the directories have a common stem, such as F</usr/local/man/man1>
- and F</usr/local/man/man3>, you need only to add that stem
- (F</usr/local/man>) to your man(1) configuration files or your MANPATH
- environment variable. If they do not share a stem, you'll have to add
- both stems.
-
- If that doesn't work for some reason, you can still use the
- supplied F<perldoc> script to view module information. You might
- also look into getting a replacement man program.
-
- If something strange has gone wrong with your program and you're not
- sure where you should look for help, try the B<-w> switch first. It
- will often point out exactly where the trouble is.
-
- =head1 DESCRIPTION
-
- Perl is a language optimized for scanning arbitrary
- text files, extracting information from those text files, and printing
- reports based on that information. It's also a good language for many
- system management tasks. The language is intended to be practical
- (easy to use, efficient, complete) rather than beautiful (tiny,
- elegant, minimal).
-
- Perl combines (in the author's opinion, anyway) some of the best
- features of C, B<sed>, B<awk>, and B<sh>, so people familiar with
- those languages should have little difficulty with it. (Language
- historians will also note some vestiges of B<csh>, Pascal, and even
- BASIC-PLUS.) Expression syntax corresponds closely to C
- expression syntax. Unlike most Unix utilities, Perl does not
- arbitrarily limit the size of your data--if you've got the memory,
- Perl can slurp in your whole file as a single string. Recursion is of
- unlimited depth. And the tables used by hashes (sometimes called
- "associative arrays") grow as necessary to prevent degraded
- performance. Perl can use sophisticated pattern matching techniques to
- scan large amounts of data quickly. Although optimized for
- scanning text, Perl can also deal with binary data, and can make dbm
- files look like hashes. Setuid Perl scripts are safer than C programs
- through a dataflow tracing mechanism that prevents many stupid
- security holes.
-
- If you have a problem that would ordinarily use B<sed> or B<awk> or
- B<sh>, but it exceeds their capabilities or must run a little faster,
- and you don't want to write the silly thing in C, then Perl may be for
- you. There are also translators to turn your B<sed> and B<awk>
- scripts into Perl scripts.
-
- But wait, there's more...
-
- Begun in 1993 (see L<perlhist>), Perl version 5 is nearly a complete
- rewrite that provides the following additional benefits:
-
- =over
-
- =item * modularity and reusability using innumerable modules
-
- Described in L<perlmod>, L<perlmodlib>, and L<perlmodinstall>.
-
- =item * embeddable and extensible
-
- Described in L<perlembed>, L<perlxstut>, L<perlxs>, L<perlcall>,
- L<perlguts>, and L<xsubpp>.
-
- =item * roll-your-own magic variables (including multiple simultaneous DBM implementations)
-
- Described in L<perltie> and L<AnyDBM_File>.
-
- =item * subroutines can now be overridden, autoloaded, and prototyped
-
- Described in L<perlsub>.
-
- =item * arbitrarily nested data structures and anonymous functions
-
- Described in L<perlreftut>, L<perlref>, L<perldsc>, and L<perllol>.
-
- =item * object-oriented programming
-
- Described in L<perlobj>, L<perltoot>, and L<perlbot>.
-
- =item * compilability into C code or Perl bytecode
-
- Described in L<B> and L<B::Bytecode>.
-
- =item * support for light-weight processes (threads)
-
- Described in L<perlthrtut> and L<Thread>.
-
- =item * support for internationalization, localization, and Unicode
-
- Described in L<perllocale> and L<utf8>.
-
- =item * lexical scoping
-
- Described in L<perlsub>.
-
- =item * regular expression enhancements
-
- Described in L<perlre>, with additional examples in L<perlop>.
-
- =item * enhanced debugger and interactive Perl environment, with integrated editor support
-
- Described in L<perldebug>.
-
- =item * POSIX 1003.1 compliant library
-
- Described in L<POSIX>.
-
- =back
-
- Okay, that's I<definitely> enough hype.
-
- =head1 AVAILABILITY
-
- Perl is available for most operating systems, including virtually
- all Unix-like platforms. See L<perlport/"Supported Platforms">
- for a listing.
-
- =head1 ENVIRONMENT
-
- See L<perlrun>.
-
- =head1 AUTHOR
-
- Larry Wall <larry@wall.org>, with the help of oodles of other folks.
-
- If your Perl success stories and testimonials may be of help to others
- who wish to advocate the use of Perl in their applications,
- or if you wish to simply express your gratitude to Larry and the
- Perl developers, please write to perl-thanks@perl.org .
-
- =head1 FILES
-
- "@INC" locations of perl libraries
-
- =head1 SEE ALSO
-
- a2p awk to perl translator
- s2p sed to perl translator
-
- http://www.perl.com/ the Perl Home Page
- http://www.perl.com/CPAN the Comprehensive Perl Archive
-
- =head1 DIAGNOSTICS
-
- The C<use warnings> pragma (and the B<-w> switch) produces some
- lovely diagnostics.
-
- See L<perldiag> for explanations of all Perl's diagnostics. The C<use
- diagnostics> pragma automatically turns Perl's normally terse warnings
- and errors into these longer forms.
-
- Compilation errors will tell you the line number of the error, with an
- indication of the next token or token type that was to be examined.
- (In a script passed to Perl via B<-e> switches, each
- B<-e> is counted as one line.)
-
- Setuid scripts have additional constraints that can produce error
- messages such as "Insecure dependency". See L<perlsec>.
-
- Did we mention that you should definitely consider using the B<-w>
- switch?
-
- =head1 BUGS
-
- The B<-w> switch is not mandatory.
-
- Perl is at the mercy of your machine's definitions of various
- operations such as type casting, atof(), and floating-point
- output with sprintf().
-
- If your stdio requires a seek or eof between reads and writes on a
- particular stream, so does Perl. (This doesn't apply to sysread()
- and syswrite().)
-
- While none of the built-in data types have any arbitrary size limits
- (apart from memory size), there are still a few arbitrary limits: a
- given variable name may not be longer than 251 characters. Line numbers
- displayed by diagnostics are internally stored as short integers,
- so they are limited to a maximum of 65535 (higher numbers usually being
- affected by wraparound).
-
- You may mail your bug reports (be sure to include full configuration
- information as output by the myconfig program in the perl source
- tree, or by C<perl -V>) to perlbug@perl.com . If you've succeeded
- in compiling perl, the B<perlbug> script in the F<utils/> subdirectory
- can be used to help mail in a bug report.
-
- Perl actually stands for Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister, but
- don't tell anyone I said that.
-
- =head1 NOTES
-
- The Perl motto is "There's more than one way to do it." Divining
- how many more is left as an exercise to the reader.
-
- The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness,
- Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
-
-