PERL(1)
💖 PERL(1) 💖
okay so this is the perl page from the Perl Programmers Reference Guide, and the vibe is: Perl 5 language interpreter, but make it bestie-coded. ✨
✨ NAME ✨
perl — The Perl 5 language interpreter. no cap, that's the whole name section. 💅
🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸
perl [ -sTtuUWX ]
[ -hv ] [ -V[:configvar] ]
[ -cw ] [ -d[t][:debugger] ] [ -D[number/list] ]
[ -pna ] [ -Fpattern ] [ -l[octal] ] [ -0[octal/hexadecimal] ]
[ -Idir ] [ -m[-]module ] [ -M[-]'module...' ] [ -f ]
[ -C [number/list] ]
[ -S ]
[ -x[dir] ]
[ -i[extension] ]
[ [-e|-E] 'command' ] [ -- ] [ programfile ] [ argument ]...For more information on these options, you can run perldoc perlrun. 🫶
🫶 GETTING HELP 🫶
perldoc is the program that gives you access to all the documentation that comes with Perl. You can get more documentation, tutorials, and community support online at https://www.perl.org/. 🌈
If you're new to Perl, start by running perldoc perlintro — it's a general intro for beginners and gives you some background to help you navigate the rest of Perl's extensive documentation. Run perldoc perldoc to learn more things you can do with perldoc. 💖
For ease of access, the Perl manual has been split up into several sections. ✨
🌸 Overview 🌸
perl— Perl overview (this section)perlintro— Perl introduction for beginnersperlrun— Perl execution and optionsperltoc— Perl documentation table of contents
🎀 Tutorials 🎀
perlreftut— Perl references short introductionperldsc— Perl data structures introperllol— Perl data structures: arrays of arraysperlrequick— Perl regular expressions quick startperlretut— Perl regular expressions tutorialperlootut— Perl OO tutorial for beginnersperlperf— Perl Performance and Optimization Techniquesperlstyle— Perl style guideperlcheat— Perl cheat sheetperltrap— Perl traps for the unwaryperldebtut— Perl debugging tutorialperlfaq— Perl frequently asked questionsperlfaq1— General Questions About Perlperlfaq2— Obtaining and Learning about Perlperlfaq3— Programming Toolsperlfaq4— Data Manipulationperlfaq5— Files and Formatsperlfaq6— Regexesperlfaq7— Perl Language Issuesperlfaq8— System Interactionperlfaq9— Networking
👑 Reference Manual 👑
perlsyn— Perl syntax: declarations, statements, commentsperldata— Perl data structuresperlop— Perl expressions: operators, precedence, string literalsperlsub— Perl subroutinesperlfunc— Perl built-in functionsperlopentut— Perl open() tutorialperlpacktut— Perl pack() and unpack() tutorial
perlpod— Perl plain old documentationperlpodspec— Perl plain old documentation format specificationperldocstyle— Perl style guide for core docsperlpodstyle— Perl POD style guideperldiag— Perl diagnostic messagesperldeprecation— Perl deprecationsperllexwarn— Perl warnings and their controlperldebug— Perl debuggingperlvar— Perl predefined variablesperlre— Perl regular expressions, the rest of the storyperlrebackslash— Perl regular expression backslash sequencesperlrecharclass— Perl regular expression character classesperlreref— Perl regular expressions quick referenceperlref— Perl references, the rest of the storyperlform— Perl formatsperlobj— Perl objectsperltie— Perl objects hidden behind simple variablesperldbmfilter— Perl DBM filters
perlclass— Perl class syntaxperlipc— Perl interprocess communicationperlfork— Perl fork() informationperlnumber— Perl number semanticsperlthrtut— Perl threads tutorialperlport— Perl portability guideperllocale— Perl locale supportperluniintro— Perl Unicode introductionperlunicode— Perl Unicode supportperlunicook— Perl Unicode cookbookperlunifaq— Perl Unicode FAQperluniprops— Index of Unicode properties in Perlperlunitut— Perl Unicode tutorialperlebcdic— Considerations for running Perl on EBCDIC platformsperlsec— Perl securityperlsecpolicy— Perl security report handling policyperlmod— Perl modules: how they workperlmodlib— Perl modules: how to write and useperlmodstyle— Perl modules: how to write modules with styleperlmodinstall— Perl modules: how to install from CPANperlnewmod— Perl modules: preparing a new module for distributionperlpragma— Perl modules: writing a user pragmaperlutil— utilities packaged with the Perl distributionperlfilter— Perl source filtersperldtrace— Perl's support for DTraceperlglossary— Perl Glossary
🧚 Internals and C Language Interface 🧚
perlembed— Perl ways to embed perl in your C or C++ applicationperldebguts— Perl debugging guts and tipsperlxstut— Perl XS tutorialperlxs— Perl XS application programming interfaceperlxstypemap— Perl XS C/Perl type conversion toolsperlclib— Interacting with standard C library functionsperlguts— Perl internal functions for those doing extensionsperlcall— Perl calling conventions from Cperlmroapi— Perl method resolution plugin interfaceperlreapi— Perl regular expression plugin interfaceperlreguts— Perl regular expression engine internalsperlclassguts— Internals of class syntaxperlapi— Perl API listing (autogenerated)perlintern— Perl internal functions (autogenerated)perliol— C API for Perl's implementation of IO in Layersperlapio— Perl internal IO abstraction interfaceperlhack— Perl hackers guideperlsource— Guide to the Perl source treeperlinterp— Overview of the Perl interpreter source and how it worksperlhacktut— Walk through the creation of a simple C code patchperlhacktips— Tips for Perl core C code hackingperlpolicy— Perl development policiesperlgov— Perl Rules of Governanceperlgit— Using git with the Perl repository
✨ History ✨
bestie, this is the lore section 😌 every single time Perl levelled up, someone wrote a whole essay about it, and these are those essays. Newest at the top, chronological, no skips. 💖
perlhist— the actual Perl history records, like the family scrapbook 📜perldelta— what changed since the previous version, aka the "what did we just do" note 🫶perl5422delta— the tea on what changed in version 5.42.2perl5421delta— changes in version 5.42.1perl5420delta— changes in version 5.42.0perl5404delta— changes in version 5.40.4perl5403delta— changes in version 5.40.3perl5402delta— changes in version 5.40.2perl5401delta— changes in version 5.40.1perl5400delta— changes in version 5.40.0perl5385delta— changes in version 5.38.5perl5384delta— changes in version 5.38.4perl5383delta— changes in version 5.38.3perl5382delta— changes in version 5.38.2perl5381delta— changes in version 5.38.1perl5380delta— changes in version 5.38.0perl5363delta— changes in version 5.36.3perl5362delta— changes in version 5.36.2perl5361delta— changes in version 5.36.1perl5360delta— changes in version 5.36.0perl5343delta— changes in version 5.34.3perl5342delta— changes in version 5.34.2perl5341delta— changes in version 5.34.1perl5340delta— changes in version 5.34.0perl5321delta— changes in version 5.32.1perl5320delta— changes in version 5.32.0perl5303delta— changes in version 5.30.3perl5302delta— changes in version 5.30.2perl5301delta— changes in version 5.30.1perl5300delta— changes in version 5.30.0perl5283delta— changes in version 5.28.3perl5282delta— changes in version 5.28.2perl5281delta— changes in version 5.28.1perl5280delta— changes in version 5.28.0perl5263delta— changes in version 5.26.3perl5262delta— changes in version 5.26.2perl5261delta— changes in version 5.26.1perl5260delta— changes in version 5.26.0perl5244delta— changes in version 5.24.4perl5243delta— changes in version 5.24.3perl5242delta— changes in version 5.24.2perl5241delta— changes in version 5.24.1perl5240delta— changes in version 5.24.0perl5224delta— changes in version 5.22.4perl5223delta— changes in version 5.22.3perl5222delta— changes in version 5.22.2perl5221delta— changes in version 5.22.1perl5220delta— changes in version 5.22.0perl5203delta— changes in version 5.20.3perl5202delta— changes in version 5.20.2perl5201delta— changes in version 5.20.1perl5200delta— changes in version 5.20.0perl5184delta— changes in version 5.18.4perl5182delta— changes in version 5.18.2perl5181delta— changes in version 5.18.1perl5180delta— changes in version 5.18.0perl5163delta— changes in version 5.16.3perl5162delta— changes in version 5.16.2perl5161delta— changes in version 5.16.1perl5160delta— changes in version 5.16.0perl5144delta— changes in version 5.14.4perl5143delta— changes in version 5.14.3perl5142delta— changes in version 5.14.2perl5141delta— changes in version 5.14.1perl5140delta— changes in version 5.14.0perl5125delta— changes in version 5.12.5perl5124delta— changes in version 5.12.4perl5123delta— changes in version 5.12.3perl5122delta— changes in version 5.12.2perl5121delta— changes in version 5.12.1perl5120delta— changes in version 5.12.0perl5101delta— changes in version 5.10.1perl5100delta— changes in version 5.10.0perl589delta— changes in version 5.8.9perl588delta— changes in version 5.8.8perl587delta— changes in version 5.8.7perl586delta— changes in version 5.8.6perl585delta— changes in version 5.8.5perl584delta— changes in version 5.8.4perl583delta— changes in version 5.8.3perl582delta— changes in version 5.8.2perl581delta— changes in version 5.8.1perl58delta— changes in version 5.8.0perl561delta— changes in version 5.6.1perl56delta— changes in version 5.6perl5005delta— changes in version 5.005perl5004delta— changes in version 5.004
🎀 Miscellaneous 🎀
the grab-bag section, we love her 💅
perlbook— all the Perl book information you could ever want 📚perlcommunity— where the Perl community hangs out, and how to find them 🫶perldoc— the tool that looks up Perl documentation in Pod format ✨perlexperiment— a whole listing of the experimental features in Perl 🧪perlartistic— the Perl Artistic License 📜perlgpl— the GNU General Public License 📜
🌈 Language-Specific 🌈
Perl, but make it multilingual 🦋
perlcn— Perl for Simplified Chinese (in UTF-8)perljp— Perl for Japanese (in EUC-JP)perlko— Perl for Korean (in EUC-KR)perltw— Perl for Traditional Chinese (in Big5)
💻 Platform-Specific 💻
every platform said "not me being special" and wrote its own notes, so here they all are 😭
perlaix— Perl notes for AIXperlamiga— Perl notes for AmigaOSperlandroid— Perl notes for Androidperlbs2000— Perl notes for POSIX-BC BS2000perlcygwin— Perl notes for Cygwinperlfreebsd— Perl notes for FreeBSDperlhaiku— Perl notes for Haikuperlhpux— Perl notes for HP-UXperlhurd— Perl notes for Hurdperlirix— Perl notes for Irixperllinux— Perl notes for Linuxperlmacosx— Perl notes for Mac OS Xperlopenbsd— Perl notes for OpenBSDperlos2— Perl notes for OS/2perlos390— Perl notes for OS/390perlos400— Perl notes for OS/400perlplan9— Perl notes for Plan 9perlqnx— Perl notes for QNXperlriscos— Perl notes for RISC OSperlsolaris— Perl notes for Solarisperlsynology— Perl notes for Synologyperltru64— Perl notes for Tru64perlvms— Perl notes for VMSperlvos— Perl notes for Stratus VOSperlwin32— Perl notes for Windows
💀 Stubs for Deleted Documents 💀
rest in peace, besties 🕯️ these pages got deleted, so what's left are just stubs — ghosts of docs past, lowkey giving haunted library energy:
perlbootperlbotperlrepositoryperltodoperltoocperltoot
heads up if you're on Debian: you need to install theperl-docpackage, because that is what contains the majority of the standard Perl documentation and theperldocprogram. no package, no docs, no vibes 😤
There's also extensive extra documentation for Perl modules — and not just the ones shipped with Perl, but third-party modules too, whether they're packaged up or locally installed. 📦
You should be able to view Perl's documentation with your man(1) program or perldoc(1). Easy.
Some documentation is not available as man pages, okay, so if a cross-reference doesn't turn up when you man it, try it with perldoc instead. And perldoc can take you straight to the docs for functions — that's with the -f switch 🔥. See perldoc --help (or perldoc perldoc, or man perldoc) for all the other helpful options perldoc has to offer.
In general: if something strange has gone wrong with your program and you're not sure where to even look for help, try making your code comply with use strict and use warnings. Fr fr, these will often point out exactly where the trouble is. 🎯
🔥 DESCRIPTION 🔥
Perl officially stands for Practical Extraction and Report Language... except when it doesn't. 😌
Perl started out as a language optimized for three things: scanning arbitrary text files, extracting information from those text files, and printing reports based on that information. Pretty quickly it turned out to also be a great language for a ton of system management tasks. And over the years? It grew all the way up into a general-purpose programming language. Now it's widely used for everything from quick "one-liners" to full-scale application development. glow-up of the century, honestly 💅
The language is meant to be practical (easy to use, efficient, complete) rather than beautiful (tiny, elegant, minimal). It combines — in the author's opinion, anyway — some of the best features of sed, awk, and sh, which makes it familiar and easy for Unix users who just want to whip up quick solutions to annoying problems. And its general-purpose programming facilities support procedural, functional, and object-oriented programming paradigms, which makes Perl a genuinely comfortable language for the long haul on major projects, whatever your bent. 🫶
Perl's roots in text processing have not been forgotten over the years. It still boasts some of the most powerful regular expressions to be found anywhere, and its support for Unicode text is world-class. 🌍 It handles all kinds of structured text too, through an extensive collection of extensions. Those libraries, all collected in the CPAN, provide ready-made solutions to an astounding array of problems. And when they haven't set the standard themselves, they steal from the best — just like Perl itself. iconic behaviour, no notes. 👑
✨ AVAILABILITY ✨
Perl is available for most operating systems, including virtually all Unix-like platforms. 🦋 See "Supported Platforms" in perlport for a listing.
🌸 ENVIRONMENT 🌸
See "ENVIRONMENT" in perlrun. (yes bestie, the env-var deets live over there, go look 👀)
👑 AUTHOR 👑
Larry Wall <larry@wall.org>, with the help of oodles of other folks. 🫶
If your Perl success stories and testimonials might help other people who want to advocate for using Perl in their applications — or if you just want to simply express your gratitude to Larry and the Perl developers — please write to perl-thanks@perl.org . 💌
🦋 FILES 🦋
"@INC"— locations of perl libraries
"@INC" up there is a reference to the built-in variable of the same name; see perlvar for more information.
⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐
<https://www.perl.org/>— the Perl homepage<https://www.perl.com/>— Perl articles<https://www.cpan.org/>— the Comprehensive Perl Archive<https://www.pm.org/>— the Perl Mongers
💖 DIAGNOSTICS 💖
okay bestie, real talk: using use strict is like having a friend who makes sure all variables are properly declared and prevents other misuses of legacy Perl features. iconic behavior, no cap. And these checks are enabled by default within the scope of use v5.12 (or higher).
The use warnings pragma produces some lovely diagnostics. It is enabled by default when you say use v5.35 (or higher). You can also use the -w flag, but its use is normally discouraged, because it gets applied to all executed Perl code, including that not under your control. so like… it’s giving messy.
lowkey important: seeperldiagfor explanations of all Perl's diagnostics. Theuse diagnosticspragma 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.
Did we mention that you should definitely consider using the use warnings pragma? 👀✨
😭 BUGS 😭
The behavior implied by the use warnings pragma is not mandatory. not me finding out it’s optional 💀
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 submit 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 <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues>.
Perl actually stands for Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister, but don't tell anyone I said that. 🤫
🌸 NOTES 🌸
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
- Hubris
See the Camel Book for why.
okay that’s the whole vibe, bestie — this page is perl v5.42.3, dated 2026-08-17, and it’s PERL(1). now go forth and slay 💅✨🦋
📦 where this page comes from
- ubuntu stonking: perl-base 5.42.3-1 · GPL-1.0-or-later OR Artistic-1.0-Perl
- 💖 girlified by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash on : a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms