Introduction to mod_perl (part 5): More Perl Basics - perldoc's Rarely Known But Very Useful Options (
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It's a known fact, that one cannot become a Perl hacker and especially
mod_perl hacker without knowing how to read Perl documentation and
search through it. Books are good, but an easily accessible and
searchable Perl reference at your fingertips is a great time saver. It
always has the up-to-date information for the version of perl you're
using.
Of course you can use online Perl documentation at the Web. I prefer
http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/CPAN/perl/ to the official URL:
http://www.perl.com/pub/v/documentation is very slow :( . The
perldoc utility provides you with access to the documentation
installed on your system. To find out what Perl manpages are
available execute:
% perldoc perl
To find what functions perl has, execute:
% perldoc perlfunc
To learn the syntax and to find examples of a specific function, you
would execute (e.g. for open()):
% perldoc -f open
Note: In perl5.005_03 and earlier, there is a bug in this and the
-q options of perldoc. It won't call pod2man, but will
display the section in POD format instead. Despite this bug it's
still readable and very useful.
The Perl FAQ (perlfaq manpage) is in several sections. To search
through the sections for open you would execute:
% perldoc -q open
This will show you all the matching Question and Answer sections,
still in POD format.
To read the perldoc manpage you would execute:
% perldoc perldoc
/ 5 
