PERL(1)
💖 perl 💖
okay so bestie, welcome to the Perl 5 language interpreter ✨ this is the main character of the whole Perl universe, and yes it's a LOT, but we're gonna get through it together, no cap.
✨ NAME ✨
perl — The Perl 5 language interpreter 💅
🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀
here's the vibe check, the whole menu of flags, literally all of it:
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 ]...want the tea on every single one of these options? run perldoc perlrun bestie, that's where it all lives 🫶
🦋 GETTING HELP 🦋
perldoc is the program that hands you ALL the documentation that ships with Perl. And if you want even more docs, tutorials, and actual community support, it's all online at <https://www.perl.org/> 🌈
new to Perl? start here: run perldoc perlintro — it's the beginner-friendly general intro and gives you the background so you can actually navigate the rest of Perl's extensive (read: enormous) documentation without spiraling 😭. And run perldoc perldoc to learn all the extra cute stuff you can do with perldoc ✨
also, because nobody wants to scroll forever, the Perl manual got split up into several sections. iconic organisational behaviour tbh 👑
Overview
perl— Perl overview (this section) 👋perlintro— Perl introduction for beginners 🌱perlrun— Perl execution and options 🏃perltoc— Perl documentation table of contents 📖
Tutorials
perlreftut— Perl references short introduction 🔗perldsc— Perl data structures intro 🧱perllol— Perl data structures: arrays of arrays 🪆perlrequick— Perl regular expressions quick start ⚡perlretut— Perl regular expressions tutorial 📝perlootut— Perl OO tutorial for beginners 🎓perlperf— Perl Performance and Optimization Techniques 🚀perlstyle— Perl style guide 💅perlcheat— Perl cheat sheet 📋perltrap— Perl traps for the unwary 💀perldebtut— Perl debugging tutorial 🐛perlfaq— Perl frequently asked questions ❓perlfaq1— 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 ✍️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 📐perldocstyle— Perl style guide for core docs 🎀perlpodstyle— Perl POD style guide 🎨perldiag— Perl diagnostic messages 🩺perldeprecation— Perl deprecations ⏳perllexwarn— Perl warnings and their control ⚠️perldebug— Perl debugging 🐞perlvar— Perl predefined variables 📌perlre— Perl regular expressions, the rest of the story 🔍perlrebackslash— Perl regular expression backslash sequences\💫perlrecharclass— Perl regular expression character classes[a-z]🔤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 🎭perlclass— Perl class syntax 🏛️perldbmfilter— Perl DBM filters 🗄️
perlipc— Perl interprocess communication 📡perlfork— Perl fork() information 🍴perlnumber— Perl number semantics 🔢perlthrtut— Perl threads tutorial 🧵perlport— Perl portability guide 🧳perllocale— Perl locale support 🌍perluniintro— Perl Unicode introduction 🌐perlunicode— Perl Unicode support 🈚perlunicook— Perl Unicode cookbook 👩🍳perlunifaq— Perl Unicode FAQ 🙋perluniprops— Index of Unicode properties in Perl 🗃️perlunitut— Perl Unicode tutorial 📚perlebcdic— Considerations for running Perl on EBCDIC platforms 🕰️perlsec— Perl security 🔒perlsecpolicy— Perl security report handling policy 🛡️perlmod— Perl modules: how they work 🧠perlmodlib— Perl modules: how to write and use 📦perlmodstyle— Perl modules: how to write modules with style ✨perlmodinstall— Perl modules: how to install from CPAN ⬇️perlnewmod— Perl modules: preparing a new module for distribution 🚚perlpragma— Perl modules: writing a user pragma 🪄perlutil— utilities packaged with the Perl distribution 🧰perlfilter— Perl source filters 🧹perldtrace— Perl's support for DTrace 🎯perlglossary— Perl Glossary 📖
Internals and C Language Interface
perlembed— Perl ways to embed perl in your C or C++ application 🪆perldebguts— Perl debugging guts and tips 🫀perlxstut— Perl XS tutorial 🧪perlxs— Perl XS application programming interface 🔌perlxstypemap— Perl XS C/Perl type conversion tools 🔄perlclib— Internal replacements for standard C library functions 🧷perlguts— Perl internal functions for those doing extensions 🫁perlcall— Perl calling conventions from C 📞perlmroapi— Perl method resolution plugin interface 🧭perlreapi— Perl regular expression plugin interface 🧩perlreguts— Perl regular expression engine internals ⚙️perlclassguts— Internals of class syntax 🏗️perlapi— Perl API listing (autogenerated) 🤖perlintern— Perl internal functions (autogenerated) 🛠️perliol— C API for Perl's implementation of IO in Layers 🧅perlapio— Perl internal IO abstraction interface 🧊perlhack— Perl hackers guide 🧑💻perlsource— Guide to the Perl source tree 🌳perlinterp— Overview of the Perl interpreter source and how it works 🔍perlhacktut— Walk through the creation of a simple C code patch 🩹perlhacktips— Tips for Perl core C code hacking 💡perlpolicy— Perl development policies 📜perlgov— Perl Rules of Governance 🏛️perlgit— Using git with the Perl repository 🌿
🕰️ History
perlhist— the Perl history records, aka the whole lore timeline 📜perldelta— Perl changes since previous versionperl5381delta— Perl changes in version 5.38.1perl5380delta— Perl changes in version 5.38.0perl5363delta— Perl changes in version 5.36.3perl5362delta— Perl changes in version 5.36.2perl5361delta— Perl changes in version 5.36.1perl5360delta— Perl changes in version 5.36.0perl5343delta— Perl changes in version 5.34.3perl5342delta— Perl changes in version 5.34.2perl5341delta— Perl changes in version 5.34.1perl5340delta— Perl changes in version 5.34.0perl5321delta— Perl changes in version 5.32.1perl5320delta— Perl changes in version 5.32.0perl5303delta— Perl changes in version 5.30.3perl5302delta— Perl changes in version 5.30.2perl5301delta— Perl changes in version 5.30.1perl5300delta— Perl changes in version 5.30.0perl5283delta— Perl changes in version 5.28.3perl5282delta— Perl changes in version 5.28.2perl5281delta— Perl changes in version 5.28.1perl5280delta— Perl changes in version 5.28.0perl5263delta— Perl changes in version 5.26.3perl5262delta— Perl changes in version 5.26.2perl5261delta— Perl changes in version 5.26.1perl5260delta— Perl changes in version 5.26.0perl5244delta— Perl changes in version 5.24.4perl5243delta— Perl changes in version 5.24.3perl5242delta— Perl changes in version 5.24.2perl5241delta— Perl changes in version 5.24.1perl5240delta— Perl changes in version 5.24.0perl5224delta— Perl changes in version 5.22.4perl5223delta— Perl changes in version 5.22.3perl5222delta— Perl changes in version 5.22.2perl5221delta— Perl changes in version 5.22.1perl5220delta— Perl changes in version 5.22.0perl5203delta— Perl changes in version 5.20.3perl5202delta— Perl changes in version 5.20.2perl5201delta— Perl changes in version 5.20.1perl5200delta— Perl changes in version 5.20.0perl5184delta— Perl changes in version 5.18.4perl5182delta— Perl changes in version 5.18.2perl5181delta— Perl changes in version 5.18.1perl5180delta— Perl changes in version 5.18.0perl5163delta— Perl changes in version 5.16.3perl5162delta— Perl changes in version 5.16.2perl5161delta— Perl changes in version 5.16.1perl5160delta— Perl changes in version 5.16.0perl5144delta— Perl changes in version 5.14.4perl5143delta— Perl changes in version 5.14.3perl5142delta— Perl changes in version 5.14.2perl5141delta— Perl changes in version 5.14.1perl5140delta— Perl changes in version 5.14.0perl5125delta— Perl changes in version 5.12.5perl5124delta— Perl changes in version 5.12.4perl5123delta— Perl changes in version 5.12.3perl5122delta— Perl changes in version 5.12.2perl5121delta— Perl changes in version 5.12.1perl5120delta— Perl changes in version 5.12.0perl5101delta— Perl changes in version 5.10.1perl5100delta— Perl changes in version 5.10.0perl589delta— Perl changes in version 5.8.9perl588delta— Perl changes in version 5.8.8perl587delta— Perl changes in version 5.8.7perl586delta— Perl changes in version 5.8.6perl585delta— Perl changes in version 5.8.5perl584delta— Perl changes in version 5.8.4perl583delta— Perl changes in version 5.8.3perl582delta— Perl changes in version 5.8.2perl581delta— Perl changes in version 5.8.1perl58delta— Perl changes in version 5.8.0perl561delta— Perl changes in version 5.6.1perl56delta— Perl changes in version 5.6perl5005delta— Perl changes in version 5.005perl5004delta— Perl changes in version 5.004
🎀 Miscellaneous
perlbook— Perl book information, for when u want the physical lore 📚perlcommunity— Perl community information, aka where ur people are 🫶perldoc— look up Perl documentation in Pod formatperlexperiment— a listing of experimental features in Perl 🧪perlartistic— Perl Artistic Licenseperlgpl— GNU General Public License
🌏 Language-Specific
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
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
perlbootperlbotperlrepositoryperltodoperltoocperltoot
okay so on Debian systems specifically, bestie, u gotta install the perl-doc package — that's the one holding the majority of the standard Perl documentation plus the perldoc program itself. no perl-doc, no docs. that's the vibe 💅
There's also extensive additional documentation for Perl modules out there — both the ones shipped with Perl and third-party modules that got packaged or installed locally. ✨
U should be able to peek at Perl's documentation with ur man(1) program or with perldoc(1). 🫶
Lowkey important: some documentation just isn't available as man pages, so if man can't find a cross-reference, try it with perldoc instead. perldoc can also drop u straight into the docs for functions — that's the -f switch, iykyk. For all the other helpful options perldoc has to offer, go look at "perldoc --help" (or "perldoc perldoc", or "man perldoc"). 💖
And generally? If something strange went wrong with ur program and ur not sure where to even look for help — try making ur code comply with use strict and use warnings. These two will often point out exactly where the trouble is. periodt. 👑
💖 DESCRIPTION 💖
Perl officially stands for Practical Extraction and Report Language — except when it doesn't. 🙈
So back in the day, Perl was originally a language optimized for scanning arbitrary text files, extracting information from those text files, and printing reports based on that information. And then it quickly became a genuinely good language for many system management tasks too. Over the years, Perl has grown into a general-purpose programming language. It's widely used for everything from quick "one-liners" all the way to full-scale application development. no cap. 🌈
The language is intended to be practical (easy to use, efficient, complete) rather than beautiful (tiny, elegant, minimal). That's the whole design philosophy bestie. It combines — in the author's opinion, anyway — some of the best features of sed, awk, and sh, which makes it familiar and easy to use for Unix users who wanna whip up quick solutions to annoying problems. ⭐
Its general-purpose programming facilities support procedural, functional, and object-oriented programming paradigms — which makes Perl a comfortable language for the long haul on major projects, whatever ur bent. 💅
And 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, 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. 😌
🌸 AVAILABILITY 🌸
Perl is available for most operating systems, including virtually all Unix-like platforms. For the full listing, see "Supported Platforms" in perlport. 🖥️✨
🌿 ENVIRONMENT 🌿
See "ENVIRONMENT" in perlrun.
👑 AUTHOR 👑
Larry Wall <larry@wall.org>, with the help of oodles of other folks. 🫶
If ur Perl success stories and testimonials might be of help to others who wish to advocate the use of Perl in their applications, or if u just wanna simply express ur 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 homepagehttps://www.perl.com/— Perl articleshttps://www.cpan.org/— the Comprehensive Perl Archivehttps://www.pm.org/— the Perl Mongers
🩺 DIAGNOSTICS 🩺
Using the "use strict" pragma ensures that all variables are properly declared and prevents other misuses of legacy Perl features. These are enabled by default within the scope of "use v5.12" (or higher). 💅
The "use warnings" pragma produces some lovely diagnostics. It's enabled by default when u say "use v5.35" (or higher). U can also use the -w flag, but its use is normally discouraged, because it gets applied to all executed Perl code — including code that's not under ur control. 😬
See perldiag 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 u 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". Seeperlsec. ⚠️
And did we mention that u should definitely consider using the use warnings pragma? 😭 just do it bestie
🫠 BUGS 🫠
okay bestie, sit down, we gotta talk about the messy parts. 💅
- the whole vibe that the
use warningspragma implies? yeah, it's not mandatory. it's giving "suggestion, not a rule," and we just have to live with that. - Perl is fully at the mercy of whatever your machine thinks certain operations mean — like type casting,
atof(), and floating-point output withsprintf(). so like, if your box is weird, Perl's gonna be weird. no cap. 😭 - if your
stdioneeds a seek or aneofbetween reads and writes on a particular stream, then so does Perl. (this does not apply tosysread()andsyswrite()— those two are built different 🫶) - so here's the tea: none of the built-in data types have any arbitrary size limits (apart from, y'know, memory size itself), BUT there are still a few arbitrary limits lurking:
- a given variable name may not be longer than 251 characters. yes, 251. very specific, don't ask.
- the line numbers that diagnostics display are internally stored as short integers, so they max out at 65535 (and higher numbers are usually affected by wraparound, which is the code equivalent of your brain buffering 😵💫)
got a bug to report? please do, we love that for you. make sure you include the full configuration information — the stuff that the myconfig program spits out in the perl source tree, or the stuff from perl -V — and send it here:
https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issuesand finally, the biggest secret of them all: 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. (spoiler: it's a lot. it's so many. it's honestly iconic. 👑)
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why. 🐪✨
and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🎀 this was perl version 5.38.2, dated 2026-09-14, and it's filed under PERL(1). go forth and slay your one-liners, ily 💖🦋
📦 where this page comes from
- ubuntu noble: perl-base 5.38.2-3.2ubuntu0.6 · 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