PERLDOC(1)

🎀 NAME 🎀

perldoc — yes, the PERLDOC(1) icon from the Perl Programmers Reference Guide — is your bestie for looking up Perl documentation in Pod format. Periodt. 💅

🧾 SYNOPSIS 🧾

perldoc [-h] [-D] [-t] [-u] [-m] [-l] [-U] [-F]
    [-i] [-V] [-T] [-r]
    [-d destination_file]
    [-o formatname]
    [-M FormatterClassName]
    [-w formatteroption:value]
    [-n nroff-replacement]
    [-X]
    [-L language_code]
    PageName|ModuleName|ProgramName|URL

Examples, bestie:

perldoc -f BuiltinFunction

perldoc -L it -f BuiltinFunction

perldoc -q FAQ Keyword

perldoc -L fr -q FAQ Keyword

perldoc -v PerlVariable

perldoc -a PerlAPI

See below for more description of the switches. 👑

💬 DESCRIPTION 💬

perldoc looks up documentation in .pod format that is embedded in the perl installation tree or in a perl script, and displays it using a variety of formatters. This is primarily used for the documentation for the perl library modules.

Your system may also have man pages installed for those modules, in which case you can probably just use the man(1) command.

If you are looking for a table of contents to the Perl library modules documentation, see the perltoc page.

✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -h — prints out a brief help message.
• -D — describes the search for the item in detail.
• -t — displays docs using the plain text converter instead of nroff. This may be faster, but it probably won’t look as nice.
• -u — skips the real Pod formatting and just shows the raw Pod source (Unformatted).
• -m module — displays the entire module: both code and unformatted pod documentation. This may be useful if the docs don’t explain a function in the detail you need, and you’d like to inspect the code directly; perldoc will find the file for you and simply hand it off for display.
• -l — displays only the file name of the module found.
• -U — when running as the superuser, don’t attempt to drop privileges for security. This option is implied with -F.

NOTE: Please see the heading SECURITY below for more information. 🚨

• -F — considers arguments as file names; no search in directories will be performed. Implies -U if run as the superuser.
• -f perlfunc — the -f option followed by the name of a perl built-in function will extract the documentation of this function from perlfunc.

Example:

perldoc -f sprintf

• -q perlfaq-search-regexp — the -q option takes a regular expression as an argument. It will search the question headings in perlfaq[1-9] and print the entries matching the regular expression.

Example:

perldoc -q shuffle

• -a perlapifunc — the -a option followed by the name of a perl api function will extract the documentation of this function from perlapi.

Example:

perldoc -a newHV

• -v perlvar — the -v option followed by the name of a Perl predefined variable will extract the documentation of this variable from perlvar.

Examples:

perldoc -v '$"'
perldoc -v @+
perldoc -v DATA

• -T — this specifies that the output is not to be sent to a pager, but is to be sent directly to STDOUT.
• -d destination-filename — this specifies that the output is to be sent neither to a pager nor to STDOUT, but is to be saved to the specified filename. Example: perldoc -oLaTeX -dtextwrapdocs.tex Text::Wrap
• -o output-formatname — this specifies that you want Perldoc to try using a Pod-formatting class for the output format that you specify. For example: -oman. This is actually just a wrapper around the -M switch; using -oformatname just looks for a loadable class by adding that format name (with different capitalizations) to the end of different classname prefixes.

For example, -oLaTeX currently tries all of the following classes: Pod::Perldoc::ToLaTeX Pod::Perldoc::Tolatex Pod::Perldoc::ToLatex Pod::Perldoc::ToLATEX Pod::Simple::LaTeX Pod::Simple::latex Pod::Simple::Latex Pod::Simple::LATEX Pod::LaTeX Pod::latex Pod::Latex Pod::LATEX.

• -M module-name — this specifies the module that you want to try using for formatting the pod. The class must at least provide a parse_from_file method. For example: perldoc -MPod::Perldoc::ToChecker.

You can specify several classes to try by joining them with commas or semicolons, as in -MTk::SuperPod;Tk::Pod.

• -w option:value or -w option — this specifies an option to call the formatter with. For example, -w textsize:15 will call $formatter->textsize(15) on the formatter object before it is used to format the object. For this to be valid, the formatter class must provide such a method, and the value you pass should be valid. (So if textsize expects an integer, and you do -w textsize:big, expect trouble.)

You can use -w optionname (without a value) as shorthand for -w optionname:TRUE. This is presumably useful in cases of on/off features like: -w page_numbering.

You can use an = instead of the :, as in: -w textsize=15. This might be more (or less) convenient, depending on what shell you use.

• -X — use an index if it is present. The -X option looks for an entry whose basename matches the name given on the command line in the file $Config{archlib}/pod.idx. The pod.idx file should contain fully qualified filenames, one per line.
• -L language_code — this allows one to specify the language code for the desired language translation. If the POD2::<language_code> package isn’t installed in your system, the switch is ignored. All available translation packages are to be found under the POD2:: namespace. See POD2::IT (or POD2::FR) to see how to create new localized POD2::* documentation packages and integrate them into Pod::Perldoc.
• PageName|ModuleName|ProgramName|URL — the item you want to look up. Nested modules (such as File::Basename) are specified either as File::Basename or File/Basename. You may also give a descriptive name of a page, such as perlfunc. For URLs, HTTP and HTTPS are the only kind currently supported.

For simple names like 'foo', when the normal search fails to find a matching page, a search with the perl prefix is tried as well. So perldoc intro is enough to find/render perlintro.pod.

• -n some-formatter — specify replacement for groff.
• -r — recursive search.
• -i — ignore case.
• -V — displays the version of perldoc you’re running.

🚨 SECURITY 🚨

Because perldoc does not run properly tainted, and is known to have security issues, when run as the superuser it will attempt to drop privileges by setting the effective and real IDs to nobody’s or nouser’s account, or -2 if unavailable. If it cannot relinquish its privileges, it will not run.

See the -U option if you do not want this behavior, but beware that there are significant security risks if you choose to use -U.

Since 3.26, using -F as the superuser also implies -U as opening most files and traversing directories requires privileges that are above the nobody/nogroup level.

🌱 ENVIRONMENT 🌱

Any switches in the PERLDOC environment variable will be used before the command line arguments.

Useful values for PERLDOC include -oterm, -otext, -ortf, -oxml, and so on, depending on what modules you have on hand; or the formatter class may be specified exactly with -MPod::Perldoc::ToTerm or the like.

perldoc also searches directories specified by the PERL5LIB (or PERLLIB if PERL5LIB is not defined) and PATH environment variables. (The latter is so that embedded pods for executables, such as perldoc itself, are available.)

In directories where either Makefile.PL or Build.PL exist, perldoc will add . and lib first to its search path, and as long as you’re not the superuser will add blib too. This is really helpful if you’re working inside of a build directory and want to read through the docs even if you have a version of a module previously installed.

perldoc will use, in order of preference, the pager defined in PERLDOC_PAGER, MANPAGER, or PAGER before trying to find a pager on its own. (MANPAGER is not used if perldoc was told to display plain text or unformatted pod.)

When using perldoc in its -m mode (display module source code), perldoc will attempt to use the pager set in PERLDOC_SRC_PAGER. A useful setting for this command is your favorite editor as in /usr/bin/nano. (Don’t judge me.) 🙈

One useful value for PERLDOC_PAGER is less -+C -E.

Having PERLDOCDEBUG set to a positive integer will make perldoc emit even more descriptive output than the -D switch does; the higher the number, the more it emits.

🌀 CHANGES 🌀

Up to 3.14_05, the switch -v was used to produce verbose messages of perldoc operation, which is now enabled by -D.

🔗 SEE ALSO 🔗

• perlpod
• Pod::Perldoc

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Current maintainer: Mark Allen <mallen@cpan.org>

Past contributors are: brian d foy <bdfoy@cpan.org> Adriano R. Ferreira <ferreira@cpan.org>, Sean M. Burke <sburke@cpan.org>, Kenneth Albanowski <kjahds@kjahds.com>, Andy Dougherty <doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu>, and many others.

💖 cute sign-off: this page is from perl v5.42.3, dated 2026-11-03 — periodt. Byeee, go read some pod. 🫶