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NAME

       perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language

SYNOPSIS

       perl [ -sTtuUWX ]      [ -hv ] [ -V[:configvar] ]
            [ -cw ] [ -d[t][:debugger] ] [ -D[number/list] ]
            [ -pna ] [ -Fpattern ] [ -l[octal] ] [ -0[octal/hexadecimal] ]
            [ -Idir ] [ -m[-]module ] [ -M[-]module... ] [ -f ]
            [ -C [number/list] ]      [ -P ]      [ -S ]      [ -x[dir] ]
            [ -i[extension] ]
            [ [-e|-E] command ] [ -- ] [ programfile ] [ argument ]...

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 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 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.

       If you’re new to Perl, you should start with perlintro, which is a
       general 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
       sections.

   Overview
           perl                Perl overview (this section)
           perlintro           Perl introduction for beginners
           perltoc             Perl documentation table of contents

   Tutorials
           perlreftut          Perl references short introduction
           perldsc             Perl data structures intro
           perllol             Perl data structures: arrays of arrays

           perlrequick         Perl regular expressions quick start
           perlretut           Perl regular expressions tutorial

           perlboot            Perl OO tutorial for beginners
           perltoot            Perl OO tutorial, part 1
           perltooc            Perl OO tutorial, part 2
           perlbot             Perl OO tricks and examples

           perlperf            Perl Performance and Optimization Techniques

           perlstyle           Perl style guide

           perlcheat           Perl cheat sheet
           perltrap            Perl traps for the unwary
           perldebtut          Perl debugging tutorial

           perlfaq             Perl frequently asked questions
             perlfaq1          General Questions About Perl
             perlfaq2          Obtaining and Learning about Perl
             perlfaq3          Programming Tools
             perlfaq4          Data Manipulation
             perlfaq5          Files and Formats
             perlfaq6          Regexes
             perlfaq7          Perl Language Issues
             perlfaq8          System Interaction
             perlfaq9          Networking

   Reference Manual
           perlsyn             Perl syntax
           perldata            Perl data structures
           perlop              Perl operators and precedence
           perlsub             Perl subroutines
           perlfunc            Perl built-in functions
             perlopentut       Perl open() tutorial
             perlpacktut       Perl pack() and unpack() tutorial
           perlpod             Perl plain old documentation
           perlpodspec         Perl plain old documentation format specification
           perlrun             Perl execution and options
           perldiag            Perl diagnostic messages
           perllexwarn         Perl warnings and their control
           perldebug           Perl debugging
           perlvar             Perl predefined variables
           perlre              Perl regular expressions, the rest of the story
           perlrebackslash     Perl regular expression backslash sequences
           perlrecharclass     Perl regular expression character classes
           perlreref           Perl regular expressions quick reference
           perlref             Perl references, the rest of the story
           perlform            Perl formats
           perlobj             Perl objects
           perltie             Perl objects hidden behind simple variables
             perldbmfilter     Perl DBM filters

           perlipc             Perl interprocess communication
           perlfork            Perl fork() information
           perlnumber          Perl number semantics

           perlthrtut          Perl threads tutorial
             perlothrtut       Old Perl threads tutorial

           perlport            Perl portability guide
           perllocale          Perl locale support
           perluniintro        Perl Unicode introduction
           perlunicode         Perl Unicode support
           perlunifaq          Perl Unicode FAQ
           perlunitut          Perl Unicode tutorial
           perlebcdic          Considerations for running Perl on EBCDIC platforms

           perlsec             Perl security

           perlmod             Perl modules: how they work
           perlmodlib          Perl modules: how to write and use
           perlmodstyle        Perl modules: how to write modules with style
           perlmodinstall      Perl modules: how to install from CPAN
           perlnewmod          Perl modules: preparing a new module for distribution
           perlpragma          Perl modules: writing a user pragma

           perlutil            utilities packaged with the Perl distribution

           perlcompile         Perl compiler suite intro

           perlfilter          Perl source filters

           perlglossary        Perl Glossary

   Internals and C Language Interface
           perlembed           Perl ways to embed perl in your C or C++ application
           perldebguts         Perl debugging guts and tips
           perlxstut           Perl XS tutorial
           perlxs              Perl XS application programming interface
           perlclib            Internal replacements for standard C library functions
           perlguts            Perl internal functions for those doing extensions
           perlcall            Perl calling conventions from C
           perlmroapi          Perl method resolution plugin interface
           perlreapi           Perl regular expression plugin interface
           perlreguts          Perl regular expression engine internals

           perlapi             Perl API listing (autogenerated)
           perlintern          Perl internal functions (autogenerated)
           perliol             C API for Perl's implementation of IO in Layers
           perlapio            Perl internal IO abstraction interface

           perlhack            Perl hackers guide
           perlrepository      Perl source repository

   Miscellaneous
           perlbook            Perl book information
           perlcommunity       Perl community information
           perltodo            Perl things to do

           perldoc             Look up Perl documentation in Pod format

           perlhist            Perl history records
           perldelta           Perl changes since previous version
           perl5100delta       Perl changes in version 5.10.0
           perl595delta        Perl changes in version 5.9.5
           perl594delta        Perl changes in version 5.9.4
           perl593delta        Perl changes in version 5.9.3
           perl592delta        Perl changes in version 5.9.2
           perl591delta        Perl changes in version 5.9.1
           perl590delta        Perl changes in version 5.9.0
           perl588delta        Perl changes in version 5.8.8
           perl589delta        Perl changes in version 5.8.9
           perl587delta        Perl changes in version 5.8.7
           perl586delta        Perl changes in version 5.8.6
           perl585delta        Perl changes in version 5.8.5
           perl584delta        Perl changes in version 5.8.4
           perl583delta        Perl changes in version 5.8.3
           perl582delta        Perl changes in version 5.8.2
           perl581delta        Perl changes in version 5.8.1
           perl58delta         Perl changes in version 5.8.0
           perl573delta        Perl changes in version 5.7.3
           perl572delta        Perl changes in version 5.7.2
           perl571delta        Perl changes in version 5.7.1
           perl570delta        Perl changes in version 5.7.0
           perl561delta        Perl changes in version 5.6.1
           perl56delta         Perl changes in version 5.6
           perl5005delta       Perl changes in version 5.005
           perl5004delta       Perl changes in version 5.004

           perlartistic        Perl Artistic License
           perlgpl             GNU General Public License

   Language-Specific
           perlcn              Perl for Simplified Chinese (in EUC-CN)
           perljp              Perl for Japanese (in EUC-JP)
           perlko              Perl for Korean (in EUC-KR)
           perltw              Perl for Traditional Chinese (in Big5)

   Platform-Specific
           perlaix             Perl notes for AIX
           perlamiga           Perl notes for AmigaOS
           perlapollo          Perl notes for Apollo DomainOS
           perlbeos            Perl notes for BeOS
           perlbs2000          Perl notes for POSIX-BC BS2000
           perlce              Perl notes for WinCE
           perlcygwin          Perl notes for Cygwin
           perldgux            Perl notes for DG/UX
           perldos             Perl notes for DOS
           perlepoc            Perl notes for EPOC
           perlfreebsd         Perl notes for FreeBSD
           perlhaiku           Perl notes for Haiku
           perlhpux            Perl notes for HP-UX
           perlhurd            Perl notes for Hurd
           perlirix            Perl notes for Irix
           perllinux           Perl notes for Linux
           perlmachten         Perl notes for Power MachTen
           perlmacos           Perl notes for Mac OS (Classic)
           perlmacosx          Perl notes for Mac OS X
           perlmint            Perl notes for MiNT
           perlmpeix           Perl notes for MPE/iX
           perlnetware         Perl notes for NetWare
           perlopenbsd         Perl notes for OpenBSD
           perlos2             Perl notes for OS/2
           perlos390           Perl notes for OS/390
           perlos400           Perl notes for OS/400
           perlplan9           Perl notes for Plan 9
           perlqnx             Perl notes for QNX
           perlriscos          Perl notes for RISC OS
           perlsolaris         Perl notes for Solaris
           perlsymbian         Perl notes for Symbian
           perltru64           Perl notes for Tru64
           perluts             Perl notes for UTS
           perlvmesa           Perl notes for VM/ESA
           perlvms             Perl notes for VMS
           perlvos             Perl notes for Stratus VOS
           perlwin32           Perl notes for Windows

       On Debian systems, you need to install the perl-doc package which
       contains the majority of the standard Perl documentation and the
       perldoc program.

       Extensive additional documentation for Perl modules is available, both
       those 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 out 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.

       ·   embeddable and extensible

           Described in perlembed, perlxstut, perlxs, perlcall, perlguts, and
           xsubpp.

       ·   roll-your-own magic variables (including multiple simultaneous DBM
           implementations)

           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

           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
           editor 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
       Unix-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
       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

        "@INC"                 locations of perl libraries

SEE ALSO

        a2p    awk to perl translator
        s2p    sed to perl translator

        http://www.perl.org/       the Perl homepage
        http://www.perl.com/       Perl articles (O'Reilly)
        http://www.cpan.org/       the Comprehensive Perl Archive
        http://www.pm.org/         the Perl Mongers

DIAGNOSTICS

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

       See perldiag 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 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 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
       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 "perl -V") to perlbug@perl.org .  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.