PMDESC(1)

💖 PMDESC(1) 💖

okay so this is the PMDESC(1) page from the User Contributed Perl Documentation (that’s the manual name bestie, no cap), and it’s literally here to help you peek at Perl modules and see their version + whatis description. slay.

🌸 NAME 🌸

pmdesc — print out version and whatis description of perl modules

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

You give it one or more module names, and it shows the version number (if known) and the 'whatis' line — that is, the NAME section’s description. This is typically used for generation of whatis databases. iconic behavior, honestly.

🎀 EXAMPLES 🎀

okay so here’s the vibe in action:

$ pmdesc IO::Socket
IO::Socket (1.25) - Object interface to socket communications

$ oldperl pmdesc IO::Socket
IO::Socket (1.1603) - Object interface to socket communications

$ pmdesc `pminst -s | perl -lane 'print $F[1] if $F[0] =~ /site/'`
XML::Parser::Expat (2.19) - Lowlevel access to James Clark's expat XML parser
XML::Parser (2.19) - A perl module for parsing XML documents

⚠️ RESTRICTIONS ⚠️

real talk: this only works on modules. It should also work on filenames, but then it’s a bit tricky finding out the package to call the VERSION method on. 🫠

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

the whole squad: pmdesc(1) pminst(1) pmpath(1) pmvers(1) — yes, pmdesc(1) is in there too, self-reference queen 💅

👑 AUTHORS and COPYRIGHTS 👑

Copyright (C) 1999 Tom Christiansen.

Copyright (C) 2006-2014, 2018 Mark Leighton Fisher.

💜 LICENSE 💜

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of either: (a) the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) any later version, or (b) the Perl "Artistic License". (This is the Perl 5 licensing scheme.)

Please note this is a change from the original pmtools-1.00 (still available on CPAN), as pmtools-1.00 were licensed only under the Perl "Artistic License".

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mwah 💋 — this page is from perl v5.32.1, dated 2022-01-21, and it’s the PMDESC(1) manual page. periodt.