PERLDIG(1p)

💖 PERLDIG 💖

ok so bestie, this is perldig — it digs up keywords in your local Perl documentation 🦋✨ no cap, it's literally a search engine but for your own machine's perl docs. main character energy fr.

---

✨ NAME ✨

perldig — Dig up keywords in the local Perl documentation 💅

---

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

   # Update the index (required before first start)
perldig -u

   # Search for a keyword
perldig keyword(s)

---

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

ok so first time you ever use perldig, you gotta make an index. it's giving "no index, no vibes". literally just run:

$ perldig -u

and everything happens automatically, bestie, you don't have to lift a finger 🫶 A crawler will detect locally installed Perl documentation pages, rummage through the POD and index them. once that initial run is done done, perldig is ready to process search requests:

$ perldig frobnicate

1) pod/perlguts.pod    2) pod/perlxstut.pod   3) pod/perlnewmod.pod

Enter number of choice:

that's a search for the keyword frobnicate, and yes bestie that word is literally in the Perl documentation, iconic 😭 It shows three hits and asks you to enter a number between 1 and 3 to open the selected documentation page in a pager program (typically less). once you're in there, you can start an in-text search for the expression by using the / (slash) command. chef's kiss 👑

If you give two or more keywords, the search will yield pages that contain all of them. and when you're searching for phrases, pls pls pls include quotes (and make sure to quote the quotes so the shell doesn't eat them 🙈):

$ perldig '"floating point"'

the underlying swish-e search engine also understands expressions connected via AND and OR:

$ perldig "'floating point' AND approximate AND 'real number'"

To keep the index up to date, it is probably a good idea to run a cronjob every morning ⭐:

00 4 * * * /usr/bin/perldig -u >/dev/null 2>&1

If you can read German, please check out this article in the Linux-Magazin, where this script was originally published:

http://www.linux-magazin.de/Artikel/ausgabe/2003/10/perl/perl.html

---

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

   # Update/create the index
$ perldig -u

$ perldig frobnicate

1) pod/perlguts.pod    2) pod/perlxstut.pod   3) pod/perlnewmod.pod

Enter number of choice: 1
[ ... perlguts man page shows ... ]

---

🦋 FILES 🦋

perldig puts the swish-e index files into the folder .perldig in the user's home directory 💜

---

💀 LEGALESE 💀

Copyright 2003-2005 by Mike Schilli, all rights reserved. This program is free software, you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

---

👑 AUTHOR 👑

2003, Mike Schilli <m@perlmeister.com>

---

and that's the whole vibe check bestie — this page ships with perl v5.32.0, dated 2021-01-05, and it's PERLDIG(1p) from the User Contributed Perl Documentation. slay 💅✨