- NAME
- SYNOPSIS
- DESCRIPTION
- ENVIRONMENT
- AUTHOR
- FILES
- SEE ALSO
- DIAGNOSTICS
- BUGS
- NOTES

# NAME

perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language

# SYNOPSIS

perl [ -sTuU ] [ -hv ] [ -V[:configvar] ] [ -cw ] [ -d[:debugger] ] [ -D[number/list] ] [ -pna ] [ -F pattern ] [ -l[octal] ] [ -0[octal] ] [ -I dir ] [ -m[-]module ] [ -M[-]'module...' ] [ -P ] [ -S ] [ -x[dir] ] [ -i[extension] ] [ -e 'command' ] [ -- ] [ programfile ] [ argument ]...

For ease of access, the Perl manual has been split up into a number of sections:

        perl                Perl overview (this section)
        perldelta           Perl changes since previous version
        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
        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
        perllocale          Perl locale support

        perlref             Perl references
        perldsc             Perl data structures intro
        perllol             Perl data structures: lists of lists
        perltoot            Perl OO tutorial
        perlobj             Perl objects
        perltie             Perl objects hidden behind simple variables
        perlbot             Perl OO tricks and examples
        perlipc             Perl interprocess communication

        perldebug           Perl debugging
        perldiag            Perl diagnostic messages
        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
        perlxs              Perl XS application programming interface
        perlxstut           Perl XS tutorial
        perlguts            Perl internal functions for those doing extensions
        perlcall            Perl calling conventions from C

        perlhist            Perl history records

(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, all of the above manpages are installed in the /usr/local/man/ directory.

Extensive additional documentation for Perl modules is available. The default configuration for perl will place this additional documentation in the /usr/local/lib/perl5/man directory (or else in the 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 /usr/local/man/man1 and /usr/local/man/man3, you need only to add that stem (/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 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 -w switch first. It will often point out exactly where the trouble is.

# 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, sed, awk, and sh, so people familiar with those languages should have little difficulty with it. (Language historians will also note some vestiges of csh, Pascal, and even BASIC-PLUS.) Expression syntax corresponds quite 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 (previously called ``associative arrays'') grow as necessary to prevent degraded performance. Perl uses sophisticated pattern matching techniques to scan large amounts of data very 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 which 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 write 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.

But wait, there's more...

Perl version 5 is nearly a complete rewrite, and provides the following additional benefits:

- Many usability enhancements

  It is now possible to write much more readable Perl code (even within regular expressions). Formerly cryptic variable names can be replaced by mnemonic identifiers. Error messages are more informative, and the optional warnings will catch many of the mistakes a novice might make. This cannot be stressed enough. Whenever you get mysterious behavior, try the -w switch!!! Whenever you don't get mysterious behavior, try using -w anyway.

- Simplified grammar

  The new yacc grammar is one half the size of the old one. Many of the arbitrary grammar rules have been regularized. The number of reserved words has been cut by 2/3. Despite this, nearly all old Perl scripts will continue to work unchanged.

- Lexical scoping

  Perl variables may now be declared within a lexical scope, like ``auto'' variables in C. Not only is this more efficient, but it contributes to better privacy for ``programming in the large''. Anonymous subroutines exhibit deep binding of lexical variables (closures).

- Arbitrarily nested data structures

  Any scalar value, including any array element, may now contain a reference to any other variable or subroutine. You can easily create anonymous variables and subroutines. Perl manages your reference counts for you.

- Modularity and reusability

  The Perl library is now defined in terms of modules which can be easily shared among various packages. A package may choose to import all or a portion of a module's published interface. Pragmas (that is, compiler directives) are defined and used by the same mechanism.

- Object-oriented programming

  A package can function as a class. Dynamic multiple inheritance and virtual methods are supported in a straightforward manner and with very little new syntax. Filehandles may now be treated as objects.

- Embeddable and Extensible

  Perl may now be embedded easily in your C or C++ application, and can either call or be called by your routines through a documented interface. The XS preprocessor is provided to make it easy to glue your C or C++ routines into Perl. Dynamic loading of modules is supported, and Perl itself can be made into a dynamic library.

- POSIX compliant

  A major new module is the POSIX module, which provides access to all available POSIX routines and definitions, via object classes where appropriate.

- Package constructors and destructors

  The new BEGIN and END blocks provide means to capture control as a package is being compiled, and after the program exits. As a degenerate case they work just like awk's BEGIN and END when you use the -p or -n switches.

- Multiple simultaneous DBM implementations

  A Perl program may now access DBM, NDBM, SDBM, GDBM, and Berkeley DB files from the same script simultaneously. In fact, the old dbmopen interface has been generalized to allow any variable to be tied to an object class which defines its access methods.

- Subroutine definitions may now be autoloaded

  In fact, the AUTOLOAD mechanism also allows you to define any arbitrary semantics for undefined subroutine calls. It's not for just autoloading.

- Regular expression enhancements

  You can now specify nongreedy quantifiers. You can now do grouping without creating a backreference. You can now write regular expressions with embedded whitespace and comments for readability. A consistent extensibility mechanism has been added that is upwardly compatible with all old regular expressions.

- Innumerable Unbundled Modules

  The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network described in the perlmodlib manpage contains hundreds of plug-and-play modules full of reusable code. See http://www.perl.com/CPAN for a site near you.

- Compilability

  While not yet in full production mode, a working perl-to-C compiler does exist. It can generate portable byte code, simple C, or optimized C code.

Okay, that's definitely enough hype.

# ENVIRONMENT

See the perlrun manpage.

# 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>.

# FILES

     "/tmp/perl-e$$"        temporary file for -e commands
     "@INC"                 locations of perl libraries

# SEE ALSO

     a2p    awk to perl translator

     s2p    sed to perl translator

# DIAGNOSTICS

The -w switch produces some lovely diagnostics.

See the perldiag manpage for explanations of all Perl's diagnostics. The `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 the case of a script passed to Perl via -e switches, each -e is counted as one line.)

Setuid scripts have additional constraints that can produce error messages such as ``Insecure dependency''. See the perlsec manpage.

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 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 255 characters, and no component of your PATH may be longer than 255 if you use -S. A regular expression may not compile to more than 32767 bytes internally.

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 `perl -V`) to <perlbug@perl.com>. If you've succeeded in compiling perl, the perlbug script in the 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.

# 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.