TABLE OF CONTENTS
perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language
perl
If you're new to Perl, you should start with perlintro [CPAN], 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.
perl Perl overview (this section)
Perl の概要 (この節です)
perlintro Perl introduction for beginners
Perl の初心者向けイントロダクション
perltoc Perl documentation table of contents
Perl ドキュメントの目次 perlreftut Perl references short introduction
Perl リファレンスの簡単な紹介
perldsc Perl data structures intro
Perl データ構造紹介
perllol Perl data structures: arrays of arrays
Perl データ構造: 配列の配列
perlrequick Perl regular expressions quick start
Perl はやわかり正規表現
perlretut Perl regular expressions tutorial
Perl 正規表現チュートリアル
perlboot Perl OO tutorial for beginners
Perl オブジェクト指向導入編
perltoot Perl OO tutorial, part 1
Perl オブジェクト指向パート１
perltooc Perl OO tutorial, part 2
Perl オブジェクト指向パート２
perlbot Perl OO tricks and examples
Perl オブジェクト指向, 仕掛けと例
perlstyle Perl style guide
Perl スタイルガイド
perlcheat Perl cheat sheet
Perl チートシート
perltrap Perl traps for the unwary
Perl 落とし穴と注意点
perldebtut Perl debugging tutorial
Perl デバッグチュートリアル
perlfaq Perl frequently asked questions
Perl に関するよく聞かれる質問
perlfaq1 General Questions About Perl
Perl に関する関する一般的な質問
perlfaq2 Obtaining and Learning about Perl
Perl の取得と学習
perlfaq3 Programming Tools
プログラミングツール
perlfaq4 Data Manipulation
データ操作
perlfaq5 Files and Formats
ファイルとフォーマット
perlfaq6 Regexes
正規表現
perlfaq7 Perl Language Issues
Perl 言語について
perlfaq8 System Interaction
システムとの連係
perlfaq9 Networking
ネットワーク 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
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
Perl スレッドチュートリアル
perlothrtut Old Perl threads tutorial
旧式 Perl スレッドチュートリアル
perlport Perl portability guide
Perl 可搬性ガイド
perllocale Perl locale support
Perl ロケールサポート
perluniintro Perl Unicode introduction
Perl ユニコード導入
perlunicode Perl Unicode support
Perl ユニコードサポート
perlebcdic Considerations for running Perl on EBCDIC platforms
EBCDICプラットフォームに対する考慮
perlsec Perl security
Perl セキュリティ
perlmod Perl modules: how they work
Perl モジュール: どの様に機能するか
perlmodlib Perl modules: how to write and use
Perl モジュール: 書き方と使い方
perlmodstyle Perl modules: how to write modules with style
Perl モジュール: 定型
perlmodinstall Perl modules: how to install from CPAN
Perl モジュール: CPANからのインストール方法
perlnewmod Perl modules: preparing a new module for distribution
Perl モジュール: 配布の準備
perlutil utilities packaged with the Perl distribution
Perl 配布物と一緒に含まれるユーティリティ
perlcompile Perl compiler suite intro
Perl コンパイラスイートイントロ
perlfilter Perl source filters
Perl ソースフィルタ
perlglossary Perl Glossary
Perl 用語集 perlembed Perl ways to embed perl in your C or C++ application
C 又は C++ アプリケーションへ perl を内蔵する方法
perldebguts Perl debugging guts and tips
Perl デバッグガッツとティップス
perlxstut Perl XS tutorial
Perl XS チュートリアル
perlxs Perl XS application programming interface
Perl XS アプリケーションプログラミングインターフェース
perlclib Internal replacements for standard C library functions
C ライブラリ関数の内部変換
perlguts Perl internal functions for those doing extensions
これらを拡張するための内部関数
perlcall Perl calling conventions from C
C 言語からの Perl 呼び出し規約
perlapi Perl API listing (autogenerated)
Perl API 一覧 (自動生成)
perlintern Perl internal functions (autogenerated)
Perl 内部関数 (自動生成)
perliol C API for Perl's implementation of IO in Layers
Perl での IO レイヤ実装のための C API
perlapio Perl internal IO abstraction interface
Perl 内部 IO 抽象化インターフェース
perlhack Perl hackers guide
Perl ハッカーガイド perlbook Perl book information
perltodo Perl things to do
perldoc Look up Perl documentation in Pod format
perlhist Perl history records
perldelta Perl changes since previous version
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 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) 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
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
perlsolaris Perl notes for Solaris
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 WindowsBy default, the manpages listed above 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.dirIf 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.
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.
But wait, there's more...
Begun in 1993 (see perlhist [CPAN]), Perl version 5 is nearly a complete rewrite that provides the following additional benefits:
modularity and reusability using innumerable modules
Described in perlmod [CPAN], perlmodlib [CPAN], and perlmodinstall [CPAN].
embeddable and extensible
Described in perlembed [CPAN], perlxstut [CPAN], perlxs [CPAN], perlcall [CPAN], perlguts [CPAN], and xsubpp [CPAN].
roll-your-own magic variables (including multiple simultaneous DBM implementations)
Described in perltie [CPAN] and AnyDBM_File [CPAN].
subroutines can now be overridden, autoloaded, and prototyped
arbitrarily nested data structures and anonymous functions
Described in perlreftut [CPAN], perlref [CPAN], perldsc [CPAN], and perllol [CPAN].
object-oriented programming
Described in perlobj [CPAN], perlboot [CPAN], perltoot [CPAN], perltooc [CPAN], and perlbot [CPAN].
support for light-weight processes (threads)
Described in perlthrtut [CPAN] and threads [CPAN].
support for Unicode, internationalization, and localization
Described in perluniintro [CPAN], perllocale [CPAN] and Locale::Maketext [CPAN].
lexical scoping
regular expression enhancements
Described in perlre [CPAN], with additional examples in perlop [CPAN].
enhanced debugger and interactive Perl environment, with integrated editor support
Described in perldebtut [CPAN], perldebug [CPAN] and perldebguts [CPAN].
POSIX 1003.1 compliant library
Okay, that's definitely enough hype.
Perl is available for most operating systems, including virtually all Unix-like platforms. See "Supported Platforms" in perlport [CPAN] for a listing.
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 .
"@INC" locations of perl libraries 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
The use warnings pragma (and the -w switch) produces some
lovely diagnostics.
See perldiag [CPAN] 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 [CPAN].
Did we mention that you should definitely consider using the -w switch?
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.
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.