perlutil.pod revision 1.3
1=head1 NAME 2 3perlutil - utilities packaged with the Perl distribution 4 5=head1 DESCRIPTION 6 7Along with the Perl interpreter itself, the Perl distribution installs a 8range of utilities on your system. There are also several utilities 9which are used by the Perl distribution itself as part of the install 10process. This document exists to list all of these utilities, explain 11what they are for and provide pointers to each module's documentation, 12if appropriate. 13 14=head1 LIST OF UTILITIES 15 16=head2 Documentation 17 18=over 3 19 20=item L<perldoc|perldoc> 21 22The main interface to Perl's documentation is C<perldoc>, although 23if you're reading this, it's more than likely that you've already found 24it. F<perldoc> will extract and format the documentation from any file 25in the current directory, any Perl module installed on the system, or 26any of the standard documentation pages, such as this one. Use 27C<perldoc E<lt>nameE<gt>> to get information on any of the utilities 28described in this document. 29 30=item L<pod2man|pod2man> and L<pod2text|pod2text> 31 32If it's run from a terminal, F<perldoc> will usually call F<pod2man> to 33translate POD (Plain Old Documentation - see L<perlpod> for an 34explanation) into a manpage, and then run F<man> to display it; if 35F<man> isn't available, F<pod2text> will be used instead and the output 36piped through your favourite pager. 37 38=item L<pod2html|pod2html> 39 40As well as these two, there is another converter: F<pod2html> will 41produce HTML pages from POD. 42 43=item L<pod2usage|pod2usage> 44 45If you just want to know how to use the utilities described here, 46F<pod2usage> will just extract the "USAGE" section; some of 47the utilities will automatically call F<pod2usage> on themselves when 48you call them with C<-help>. 49 50=item L<podselect|podselect> 51 52F<pod2usage> is a special case of F<podselect>, a utility to extract 53named sections from documents written in POD. For instance, while 54utilities have "USAGE" sections, Perl modules usually have "SYNOPSIS" 55sections: C<podselect -s "SYNOPSIS" ...> will extract this section for 56a given file. 57 58=item L<podchecker|podchecker> 59 60If you're writing your own documentation in POD, the F<podchecker> 61utility will look for errors in your markup. 62 63=item L<splain|splain> 64 65F<splain> is an interface to L<perldiag> - paste in your error message 66to it, and it'll explain it for you. 67 68=item C<roffitall> 69 70The C<roffitall> utility is not installed on your system but lives in 71the F<pod/> directory of your Perl source kit; it converts all the 72documentation from the distribution to F<*roff> format, and produces a 73typeset PostScript or text file of the whole lot. 74 75=back 76 77=head2 Converters 78 79To help you convert legacy programs to more modern Perl, the 80L<pl2pm|pl2pm> utility will help you convert old-style Perl 4 libraries 81to new-style Perl5 modules. 82 83=head2 Administration 84 85=over 3 86 87=item L<libnetcfg|libnetcfg> 88 89To display and change the libnet configuration run the libnetcfg command. 90 91=item L<perlivp> 92 93The F<perlivp> program is set up at Perl source code build time to test 94the Perl version it was built under. It can be used after running C<make 95install> (or your platform's equivalent procedure) to verify that perl 96and its libraries have been installed correctly. 97 98=back 99 100=head2 Development 101 102There are a set of utilities which help you in developing Perl programs, 103and in particular, extending Perl with C. 104 105=over 3 106 107=item L<perlbug|perlbug> 108 109F<perlbug> is the recommended way to report bugs in the perl interpreter 110itself or any of the standard library modules back to the developers; 111please read through the documentation for F<perlbug> thoroughly before 112using it to submit a bug report. 113 114=item L<perlthanks|perlbug> 115 116This program provides an easy way to send a thank-you message back to the 117authors and maintainers of perl. It's just F<perlbug> installed under 118another name. 119 120=item L<h2ph|h2ph> 121 122Back before Perl had the XS system for connecting with C libraries, 123programmers used to get library constants by reading through the C 124header files. You may still see C<require 'syscall.ph'> or similar 125around - the F<.ph> file should be created by running F<h2ph> on the 126corresponding F<.h> file. See the F<h2ph> documentation for more on how 127to convert a whole bunch of header files at once. 128 129=item L<h2xs|h2xs> 130 131F<h2xs> converts C header files into XS modules, and will try and write 132as much glue between C libraries and Perl modules as it can. It's also 133very useful for creating skeletons of pure Perl modules. 134 135=item L<enc2xs> 136 137F<enc2xs> builds a Perl extension for use by Encode from either 138Unicode Character Mapping files (.ucm) or Tcl Encoding Files (.enc). 139Besides being used internally during the build process of the Encode 140module, you can use F<enc2xs> to add your own encoding to perl. 141No knowledge of XS is necessary. 142 143=item L<xsubpp> 144 145F<xsubpp> is a compiler to convert Perl XS code into C code. 146It is typically run by the makefiles created by L<ExtUtils::MakeMaker>. 147 148F<xsubpp> will compile XS code into C code by embedding the constructs 149necessary to let C functions manipulate Perl values and creates the glue 150necessary to let Perl access those functions. 151 152=item L<prove> 153 154F<prove> is a command-line interface to the test-running functionality 155of F<Test::Harness>. It's an alternative to C<make test>. 156 157=item L<corelist> 158 159A command-line front-end to C<Module::CoreList>, to query what modules 160were shipped with given versions of perl. 161 162=back 163 164=head2 General tools 165 166A few general-purpose tools are shipped with perl, mostly because they 167came along modules included in the perl distribution. 168 169=over 3 170 171=item L<piconv> 172 173B<piconv> is a Perl version of B<iconv>, a character encoding converter 174widely available for various Unixen today. This script was primarily a 175technology demonstrator for Perl v5.8.0, but you can use piconv in the 176place of iconv for virtually any case. 177 178=item L<ptar> 179 180F<ptar> is a tar-like program, written in pure Perl. 181 182=item L<ptardiff> 183 184F<ptardiff> is a small utility that produces a diff between an extracted 185archive and an unextracted one. (Note that this utility requires the 186C<Text::Diff> module to function properly; this module isn't distributed 187with perl, but is available from the CPAN.) 188 189=item L<ptargrep> 190 191F<ptargrep> is a utility to apply pattern matching to the contents of files 192in a tar archive. 193 194=item L<shasum> 195 196This utility, that comes with the C<Digest::SHA> module, is used to print 197or verify SHA checksums. 198 199=item L<zipdetails> 200 201L<zipdetails> displays information about the internal record structure of the zip file. 202It is not concerned with displaying any details of the compressed data stored in the zip file. 203 204=back 205 206=head2 Installation 207 208These utilities help manage extra Perl modules that don't come with the perl 209distribution. 210 211=over 3 212 213=item L<cpan> 214 215F<cpan> is a command-line interface to CPAN.pm. It allows you to install 216modules or distributions from CPAN, or just get information about them, and 217a lot more. It is similar to the command line mode of the L<CPAN> module, 218 219 perl -MCPAN -e shell 220 221=item L<instmodsh> 222 223A little interface to ExtUtils::Installed to examine installed modules, 224validate your packlists and even create a tarball from an installed module. 225 226=back 227 228=head1 SEE ALSO 229 230L<perldoc|perldoc>, L<pod2man|pod2man>, L<perlpod>, 231L<pod2html|pod2html>, L<pod2usage|pod2usage>, L<podselect|podselect>, 232L<podchecker|podchecker>, L<splain|splain>, L<perldiag>, 233C<roffitall|roffitall>, L<File::Find|File::Find>, L<pl2pm|pl2pm>, 234L<perlbug|perlbug>, L<h2ph|h2ph>, L<h2xs|h2xs>, L<enc2xs>, 235L<xsubpp>, L<cpan>, L<instmodsh>, L<piconv>, L<prove>, L<corelist>, L<ptar>, 236L<ptardiff>, L<shasum>, L<zipdetails> 237 238=cut 239