perldoc looks up a piece of documentation in .pod format
that is embedded in the perl installation tree or in a perl
script, and displays it via `pod2man | nroff -man | $PAGER'.
(In addition, if running under HP-UX, `col -x' will be
used.) This is primarily used for the documentation for the
perl library modules.
Your system may also have man pages installed for those
modules, in which case you can probably just use the man(1)
command.
OPTIONS
-h help
Prints out a brief help message.
-v verbose
Describes search for the item in detail.
-t text output
Display docs using plain text converter, instead of
nroff. This may be faster, but it won't look as nice.
-u unformatted
Find docs only; skip reformatting by pod2*
-m module
Display the entire module: both code and unformatted
pod documentation. This may be useful if the docs
don't explain a function in the detail you need, and
you'd like to inspect the code directly; perldoc will
find the file for you and simply hand it off for
display.
-l file name only
Display the file name of the module found.
-F file names
Consider arguments as file names, no search in
directories will be performed.
-f perlfunc
The -f option followed by the name of a perl built in
function will extract the documentation of this
function from the perlfunc manpage.
-q perlfaq
The -q option takes a regular expression as an
argument. It will search the question headings in
perlfaq[1-9] and print the entries matching the regular
expression.
-X use an index if present
The -X option looks for a entry whose basename matches
the name given on the command line in the file
`$Config{archlib}/pod.idx'. The pod.idx file should
contain fully qualified filenames, one per line.
-U run insecurely
Because perldoc does not run properly tainted, and is
known to have security issues, it will not normally
execute as the superuser. If you use the -U flag, it
will do so, but only after setting the effective and
real IDs to nobody's or nouser's account, or -2 if
unavailable. If it cannot relinguish its privileges,
it will not run.
PageName|ModuleName|ProgramName
The item you want to look up. Nested modules (such as
`File::Basename') are specified either as
`File::Basename' or `File/Basename'. You may also give
a descriptive name of a page, such as `perlfunc'. You
may also give a partial or wrong-case name, such as
"basename" for "File::Basename", but this will be
slower, if there is more then one page with the same
partial name, you will only get the first one.
ENVIRONMENT
Any switches in the `PERLDOC' environment variable will be
used before the command line arguments. `perldoc' also
searches directories specified by the `PERL5LIB' (or
`PERLLIB' if `PERL5LIB' is not defined) and `PATH'
environment variables. (The latter is so that embedded pods
for executables, such as `perldoc' itself, are available.)
`perldoc' will use, in order of preference, the pager
defined in `PERLDOC_PAGER', `MANPAGER', or `PAGER' before
trying to find a pager on its own. (`MANPAGER' is not used
if `perldoc' was told to display plain text or unformatted
pod.)
One useful value for `PERLDOC_PAGER' is `less -+C -E'.