Programming Perl, 4th Edition

Online Documentation

Perl’s extensive online documentation comes as part of the standard Perl distribution. (See the next section for offline documentation.) Additional documentation shows up whenever you install a module from CPAN.

When we refer to a “Perl manpage” in this book, we’re talking about this set of online Perl manual pages, sitting on your computer. The name manpage is purely a convention meaning a file containing documentation—you don’t need a Unix-style man program to read one. You may even have the Perl manpages installed as HTML pages, especially on non-Unix systems.

The online manpages for Perl have been divided into separate sections so you can easily find what you are looking for without wading through hundreds of pages of text. Since the top-level manpage is simply called perl, the Unix command “man perl” should take you to it.^[2] That page in turn directs you to more specific pages. For example, “man perlre” will display the manpage for Perl’s regular expressions. The perldoc command often works on systems when the man command won’t. Your port may also provide the Perl manpages in HTML format or your system’s native help format. Check with your local sysadmin, unless you’re the local sysadmin. In which case, ask the monks at http://perlmonks.org.

^[2] If you still get a truly humongous page when you do that, you’re probably picking up the ancient v4 manpage. Check your MANPATH for archaeological sites. (Say “perldoc perl” to find out how to configure your MANPATH ...