PERL(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL(1)

NAME perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language SYNOPSIS perl [ -sTtuUWX ] [ -hv ebugger] ] [ -D[number/list] ] tal/hexadecimal] ] [ -Idir ] [ -m[-]module ber/list] ] [ -P ] [ -S ] [ [-e|-E] 'command' ] [ ] [ -V[:configvar] ] [ -cw ] [ -d[t][:d [ -pna ] [ -Fpattern ] [ -l[octal] ] [ -0[oc ] [ -M[-]'module...' ] [ -f ] [ -C [num [ -x[dir] ] [ -i[extension] ] -- ] [ programfile ] [ argument ]...

DESCRIPTION Perl is a language optimized for scanning arbitrary text files, extractin g information from those text files, and printing reports based on that informat ion. It's also a good language for many system management tasks. The language is intended to be practic al (easy to use, efficient, complete) rather than beautiful (tiny, elegant, mini mal). Perl combines (in the author's opinion, anyway) some of the best features of C, sed, awk, and sh, so people familiar with those languages should have lit tle difficulty with it. (Language historians will also note some vestiges of csh, Pascal, and eve n BASIC-PLUS.) Expression syntax corresponds closely to C expression syntax. U nlike most Unix utilities, Perl does not arbitrarily limit the size of your data--if you've got the memor y, Perl can slurp in your whole file as a single string. Recursion is of unlimi ted depth. And the tables used by hashes (sometimes called "associative arrays") grow as necessary to pr event degraded performance. Perl can use sophisticated pattern matching techniq ues to scan large amounts of data quickly. Although optimized for scanning text, Perl can also deal w ith binary data, and can make dbm files look like hashes. Setuid Perl scripts a re safer than C programs through a dataflow tracing mechanism that prevents many stupid security holes. If you have a problem that would ordinarily use sed or awk or sh, but it exceeds their capabilities or must run a little faster, and you don't want to wr ite the silly thing in C, then Perl may be for you. There are also translators to turn your sed and awk scripts into Perl scripts. If you're new to Perl, you should start with perlintro, which is a genera l intro for beginners and provides some background to help you navigate the rest of Perl's extensive documentation. For ease of access, the Perl manual has been split up into several sectio ns. Overview perl perlintro perltoc Perl overview (this section) Perl introduction for beginners Perl documentation table of contents

Tutorials perlreftut perldsc perllol perlrequick perlretut perlboot perltoot perltooc perlbot perlperf perlstyle perlcheat perltrap perldebtut perlfaq perlfaq1 perlfaq2 perlfaq3 perlfaq4 perlfaq5 perlfaq6 perlfaq7 perlfaq8 perlfaq9 Reference Manual perlsyn perldata perlop perlsub perlfunc perlopentut perlpacktut perlpod perlpodspec perlrun perldiag perllexwarn perldebug perlvar perlre perlrebackslash perlrecharclass perlreref perlref perlform perlobj perltie perldbmfilter perlipc perlfork

Perl references short introduction Perl data structures intro Perl data structures: arrays of arrays Perl regular expressions quick start Perl regular expressions tutorial Perl Perl Perl Perl OO OO OO OO tutorial for beginners tutorial, part 1 tutorial, part 2 tricks and examples

Perl Performance and Optimization Techniques Perl style guide Perl cheat sheet Perl traps for the unwary Perl debugging tutorial Perl frequently asked questions General Questions About Perl Obtaining and Learning about Perl Programming Tools Data Manipulation Files and Formats Regexes Perl Language Issues System Interaction Networking Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl syntax data structures operators and precedence subroutines built-in functions open() tutorial pack() and unpack() tutorial plain old documentation plain old documentation format specification execution and options diagnostic messages warnings and their control debugging predefined variables regular expressions, the rest of the story regular expression backslash sequences regular expression character classes regular expressions quick reference references, the rest of the story formats objects objects hidden behind simple variables DBM filters

Perl interprocess communication Perl fork() information

perlnumber perlthrtut perlothrtut perlport perllocale perluniintro perlunicode perlunifaq perlunitut perlebcdic ms perlsec perlmod perlmodlib perlmodstyle perlmodinstall perlnewmod tion perlpragma perlutil perlcompile perlfilter perlglossary

Perl number semantics Perl threads tutorial Old Perl threads tutorial Perl portability guide Perl locale support Perl Unicode introduction Perl Unicode support Perl Unicode FAQ Perl Unicode tutorial Considerations for running Perl on EBCDIC platfor Perl security Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl modules: modules: modules: modules: modules: how they work how to write and use how to write modules with style how to install from CPAN preparing a new module for distribu

Perl modules: writing a user pragma utilities packaged with the Perl distribution Perl compiler suite intro Perl source filters Perl Glossary

Internals and C Language Interface perlembed Perl ways to embed perl in your C or C++ applicat ion perldebguts perlxstut perlxs perlclib tions perlguts s perlcall perlmroapi perlreapi perlreguts perlapi perlintern perliol perlapio perlhack perlrepository Miscellaneous perlbook perlcommunity perltodo Perl Perl Perl Perl calling conventions from C method resolution plugin interface regular expression plugin interface regular expression engine internals Perl internal functions for those doing extension Perl debugging guts and tips Perl XS tutorial Perl XS application programming interface Internal replacements for standard C library func

Perl API listing (autogenerated) Perl internal functions (autogenerated) C API for Perl's implementation of IO in Layers Perl internal IO abstraction interface Perl hackers guide Perl source repository Perl book information Perl community information Perl things to do

perldoc perlhist perldelta perl5100delta perl595delta perl594delta perl593delta perl592delta perl591delta perl590delta perl588delta perl589delta perl587delta perl586delta perl585delta perl584delta perl583delta perl582delta perl581delta perl58delta perl573delta perl572delta perl571delta perl570delta perl561delta perl56delta perl5005delta perl5004delta perlartistic perlgpl Language-Specific perlcn perljp perlko perltw Platform-Specific perlaix perlamiga perlapollo perlbeos perlbs2000 perlce perlcygwin perldgux perldos perlepoc perlfreebsd perlhaiku perlhpux perlhurd perlirix perllinux perlmachten perlmacos perlmacosx perlmint

Look up Perl documentation in Pod format Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl history changes changes changes changes changes changes changes changes changes changes changes changes changes changes changes changes changes changes changes changes changes changes changes changes changes changes records since previous version in version 5.10.0 in version 5.9.5 in version 5.9.4 in version 5.9.3 in version 5.9.2 in version 5.9.1 in version 5.9.0 in version 5.8.8 in version 5.8.9 in version 5.8.7 in version 5.8.6 in version 5.8.5 in version 5.8.4 in version 5.8.3 in version 5.8.2 in version 5.8.1 in version 5.8.0 in version 5.7.3 in version 5.7.2 in version 5.7.1 in version 5.7.0 in version 5.6.1 in version 5.6 in version 5.005 in version 5.004

Perl Artistic License GNU General Public License Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl for for for for Simplified Chinese (in EUC-CN) Japanese (in EUC-JP) Korean (in EUC-KR) Traditional Chinese (in Big5) for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for AIX AmigaOS Apollo DomainOS BeOS POSIX-BC BS2000 WinCE Cygwin DG/UX DOS EPOC FreeBSD Haiku HP-UX Hurd Irix Linux Power MachTen Mac OS (Classic) Mac OS X MiNT

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perlmpeix perlnetware perlopenbsd perlos2 perlos390 perlos400 perlplan9 perlqnx perlriscos perlsolaris perlsymbian perltru64 perluts perlvmesa perlvms perlvos perlwin32

Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl Perl

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MPE/iX NetWare OpenBSD OS/2 OS/390 OS/400 Plan 9 QNX RISC OS Solaris Symbian Tru64 UTS VM/ESA VMS Stratus VOS Windows

On Debian systems, you need to install the perl-doc package which contain s the majority of the standard Perl documentation and the perldoc program. Extensive additional documentation for Perl modules is available, both th ose distributed with Perl and third-party modules which are packaged or locally installed. You should be able to view Perl's documentation with your man(1) program or perldoc(1). If something strange has gone wrong with your program and you're not sure where you should look for help, try the -w switch first. It will often point o ut exactly where the trouble is. But wait, there's more... Begun in 1993 (see perlhist), Perl version 5 is nearly a complete rewrite that provides the following additional benefits: modularity and reusability using innumerable modules Described in perlmod, perlmodlib, and perlmodinstall. ubpp. roll-your-own magic variables (including multiple simultaneous DBM imple mentations) Described in perltie and AnyDBM_File. subroutines can now be overridden, autoloaded, and prototyped Described in perlsub. arbitrarily nested data structures and anonymous functions Described in perlreftut, perlref, perldsc, and perllol. object-oriented programming embeddable and extensible Described in perlembed, perlxstut, perlxs, perlcall, perlguts, and xs

Described in perlobj, perlboot, perltoot, perltooc, and perlbot. support for light-weight processes (threads) Described in perlthrtut and threads. support for Unicode, internationalization, and localization Described in perluniintro, perllocale and Locale::Maketext. lexical scoping Described in perlsub. regular expression enhancements Described in perlre, with additional examples in perlop. enhanced debugger and interactive Perl environment, with integrated edit or support Described in perldebtut, perldebug and perldebguts. POSIX 1003.1 compliant library Described in POSIX. Okay, that's definitely enough hype. AVAILABILITY Perl is available for most operating systems, including virtually all Uni x-like platforms. See "Supported Platforms" in perlport for a listing. ENVIRONMENT See perlrun. 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 wh o wish to advocate the use of Perl in their applications, or if you wish to simp ly express your gratitude to Larry and the Perl developers, please write to perl-thanks@perl.org . FILES "@INC" SEE ALSO a2p s2p awk to perl translator sed to perl translator the Perl homepage Perl articles (O'Reilly) the Comprehensive Perl Archive the Perl Mongers locations of perl libraries

http://www.perl.org/ http://www.perl.com/ http://www.cpan.org/ http://www.pm.org/

DIAGNOSTICS The "use warnings" pragma (and the -w switch) produces some lovely diagno stics.

See perldiag for explanations of all Perl's diagnostics. The "use diagno stics" 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 in dication of the next token or token type that was to be examined. (In a script passed to Perl via -e switches, each -e is counted as one line.) Setuid scripts have additional constraints that can produce error message s such as "Insecure dependency". See perlsec. Did we mention that you should definitely consider using the -w switch? BUGS The -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 partic ular 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 (apa rt 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 usu ally being affected by wraparound). You may mail your bug reports (be sure to include full configuration info rmation as output by the myconfig program in the perl source tree, or by "perl V") to perlbug@perl.org . If you've succeeded in compiling perl, the perlbug script in the utils/ subd irectory 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. NOTES The Perl motto is "There's more than one way to do it." Divining how man y 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.

perl v5.10.1 2011-04-26 PERL(1)