PERLUTIL(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLUTIL(1) #

PERLUTIL(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLUTIL(1)

NNAAMMEE #

 perlutil - utilities packaged with the Perl distribution

DDEESSCCRRIIPPTTIIOONN #

 Along with the Perl interpreter itself, the Perl distribution installs a
 range of utilities on your system. There are also several utilities which
 are used by the Perl distribution itself as part of the install process.
 This document exists to list all of these utilities, explain what they
 are for and provide pointers to each module's documentation, if
 appropriate.

LLIISSTT OOFF UUTTIILLIITTIIEESS #

DDooccuummeennttaattiioonn perldoc The main interface to Perl’s documentation is _p_e_r_l_d_o_c, although if you’re reading this, it’s more than likely that you’ve already found it. _p_e_r_l_d_o_c will extract and format the documentation from any file in the current directory, any Perl module installed on the system, or any of the standard documentation pages, such as this one. Use “perldoc ” to get information on any of the utilities described in this document.

 pod2man
 pod2text
    If it's run from a terminal, _p_e_r_l_d_o_c will usually call _p_o_d_2_m_a_n to
    translate POD (Plain Old Documentation - see perlpod for an
    explanation) into a manpage, and then run _m_a_n to display it; if _m_a_n
    isn't available, _p_o_d_2_t_e_x_t will be used instead and the output piped
    through your favourite pager.

 pod2html
    As well as these two, there is another converter: _p_o_d_2_h_t_m_l will
    produce HTML pages from POD.

 pod2usage
    If you just want to know how to use the utilities described here,
    _p_o_d_2_u_s_a_g_e will just extract the "USAGE" section; some of the utilities
    will automatically call _p_o_d_2_u_s_a_g_e on themselves when you call them
    with "-help".

 podchecker
    If you're writing your own documentation in POD, the _p_o_d_c_h_e_c_k_e_r
    utility will look for errors in your markup.

 splain
    _s_p_l_a_i_n is an interface to perldiag - paste in your error message to
    it, and it'll explain it for you.

 _r_o_f_f_i_t_a_l_l
    The _r_o_f_f_i_t_a_l_l utility is not installed on your system but lives in the
    _p_o_d_/ directory of your Perl source kit; it converts all the
    documentation from the distribution to _*_r_o_f_f format, and produces a
    typeset PostScript or text file of the whole lot.

CCoonnvveerrtteerrss pl2pm To help you convert legacy programs to more modern Perl, the _p_l_2_p_m utility will help you convert old-style Perl 4 libraries to new-style Perl5 modules.

AAddmmiinniissttrraattiioonn libnetcfg To display and change the libnet configuration run the libnetcfg command.

 perlivp
    The _p_e_r_l_i_v_p program is set up at Perl source code build time to test
    the Perl version it was built under.  It can be used after running
    "make install" (or your platform's equivalent procedure) to verify
    that perl and its libraries have been installed correctly.

DDeevveellooppmmeenntt There are a set of utilities which help you in developing Perl programs, and in particular, extending Perl with C.

 perlbug
    _p_e_r_l_b_u_g used to be the recommended way to report bugs in the perl
    interpreter itself or any of the standard library modules back to the
    developers; bug reports and patches should now be submitted to
    <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues>.

 perlthanks
    This program provides an easy way to send a thank-you message back to
    the authors and maintainers of perl. It's just _p_e_r_l_b_u_g installed under
    another name.

 h2ph
    Back before Perl had the XS system for connecting with C libraries,
    programmers used to get library constants by reading through the C
    header files. You may still see "require 'syscall.ph'" or similar
    around - the _._p_h file should be created by running _h_2_p_h on the
    corresponding _._h file. See the _h_2_p_h documentation for more on how to
    convert a whole bunch of header files at once.

 h2xs
    _h_2_x_s converts C header files into XS modules, and will try and write
    as much glue between C libraries and Perl modules as it can. It's also
    very useful for creating skeletons of pure Perl modules.

 enc2xs
    _e_n_c_2_x_s builds a Perl extension for use by Encode from either Unicode
    Character Mapping files (.ucm) or Tcl Encoding Files (.enc).  Besides
    being used internally during the build process of the Encode module,
    you can use _e_n_c_2_x_s to add your own encoding to perl.  No knowledge of
    XS is necessary.

 xsubpp
    _x_s_u_b_p_p is a compiler to convert Perl XS code into C code.  It is
    typically run by the makefiles created by ExtUtils::MakeMaker.

    _x_s_u_b_p_p will compile XS code into C code by embedding the constructs
    necessary to let C functions manipulate Perl values and creates the
    glue necessary to let Perl access those functions.

 prove
    _p_r_o_v_e is a command-line interface to the test-running functionality of
    Test::Harness.  It's an alternative to "make test".

 corelist
    A command-line front-end to Module::CoreList, to query what modules
    were shipped with given versions of perl.

GGeenneerraall ttoooollss A few general-purpose tools are shipped with perl, mostly because they came along modules included in the perl distribution.

 encguess
    _e_n_c_g_u_e_s_s will attempt to guess the character encoding of files.

 json_pp
    _j_s_o_n___p_p is a pure Perl JSON converter and formatter.

 piconv
    _p_i_c_o_n_v is a Perl version of iiccoonnvv(1), a character encoding converter
    widely available for various Unixen today.  This script was primarily
    a technology demonstrator for Perl v5.8.0, but you can use piconv in
    the place of iconv for virtually any case.

 ptar
    _p_t_a_r is a tar-like program, written in pure Perl.

 ptardiff
    _p_t_a_r_d_i_f_f is a small utility that produces a diff between an extracted
    archive and an unextracted one. (Note that this utility requires the
    Text::Diff module to function properly; this module isn't distributed
    with perl, but is available from the CPAN.)

 ptargrep
    _p_t_a_r_g_r_e_p is a utility to apply pattern matching to the contents of
    files in a tar archive.

 shasum
    This utility, that comes with the Digest::SHA module, is used to print
    or verify SHA checksums.

 streamzip
    _s_t_r_e_a_m_z_i_p compresses data streamed to STDIN into a streamed zip
    container.

 zipdetails
    _z_i_p_d_e_t_a_i_l_s displays information about the internal record structure of
    the zip file.  It is not concerned with displaying any details of the
    compressed data stored in the zip file.

IInnssttaallllaattiioonn These utilities help manage extra Perl modules that don’t come with the perl distribution.

 cpan
    _c_p_a_n is a command-line interface to CPAN.pm.  It allows you to install
    modules or distributions from CPAN, or just get information about
    them, and a lot more.  It is similar to the command line mode of the
    CPAN module,

        perl -MCPAN -e shell

 instmodsh
    A little interface to ExtUtils::Installed to examine installed
    modules, validate your packlists and even create a tarball from an
    installed module.

SSEEEE AALLSSOO #

 perldoc, pod2man, pod2text, pod2html, pod2usage, podchecker, splain,
 pl2pm, perlbug, h2ph, h2xs, enc2xs, xsubpp, cpan, encguess, instmodsh,
 json_pp, piconv, prove, corelist, ptar, ptardiff, shasum, streamzip,
 zipdetails

perl v5.36.3 2023-02-15 PERLUTIL(1)