diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'pod/perl.pod')
| -rw-r--r-- | pod/perl.pod | 42 |
1 files changed, 31 insertions, 11 deletions
diff --git a/pod/perl.pod b/pod/perl.pod index 2487a5e742..e43424f26b 100644 --- a/pod/perl.pod +++ b/pod/perl.pod @@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ For ease of access, the Perl manual has been split up into a number of sections: perl Perl overview (this section) - perltoc Perl documentation table of contents + perlnews Perl news about changes from previous version perldata Perl data structures perlsyn Perl syntax @@ -31,11 +31,12 @@ of sections: perlsub Perl subroutines perlmod Perl modules perlform Perl formats - perli18n Perl internalization + perllocale Perl locale support perlref Perl references perldsc Perl data structures intro perllol Perl data structures: lists of lists + perltoot Perl OO tutorial perlobj Perl objects perltie Perl objects hidden behind simple variables perlbot Perl OO tricks and examples @@ -69,7 +70,7 @@ in the appropriate start-up files. To find out where these are, type: perl -V:man.dir If the directories were F</usr/local/man/man1> and F</usr/local/man/man3>, -you would only need to add F</usr/local/man> to your MANPATH. If +you would need to add only F</usr/local/man> to your MANPATH. If they are different, you'll have to add both stems. If that doesn't work for some reason, you can still use the @@ -82,7 +83,7 @@ will often point out exactly where the trouble is. =head1 DESCRIPTION -Perl is an interpreted language optimized for scanning arbitrary +Perl is a language optimized for scanning arbitrary text files, extracting information from those text files, and printing reports based on that information. It's also a good language for many system management tasks. The language is intended to be practical @@ -138,7 +139,8 @@ will continue to work unchanged. Perl variables may now be declared within a lexical scope, like "auto" variables in C. Not only is this more efficient, but it contributes -to better privacy for "programming in the large". +to better privacy for "programming in the large". Anonymous +subroutines exhibit deep binding of lexical variables (closures). =item * Arbitrarily nested data structures @@ -166,7 +168,7 @@ Perl may now be embedded easily in your C or C++ application, and can either call or be called by your routines through a documented interface. The XS preprocessor is provided to make it easy to glue your C or C++ routines into Perl. Dynamic loading of modules is -supported. +supported, and Perl itself can be made into a dynamic library. =item * POSIX compliant @@ -191,7 +193,7 @@ to an object class which defines its access methods. =item * Subroutine definitions may now be autoloaded In fact, the AUTOLOAD mechanism also allows you to define any arbitrary -semantics for undefined subroutine calls. It's not just for autoloading. +semantics for undefined subroutine calls. It's not for just autoloading. =item * Regular expression enhancements @@ -201,6 +203,18 @@ with embedded whitespace and comments for readability. A consistent extensibility mechanism has been added that is upwardly compatible with all old regular expressions. +=item * Innumerable Unbundled Modules + +The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network described in L<perlmod> +contains hundreds of plug-and-play modules full of reusable +code. See F<http://www.perl.com/CPAN> for a site near you. + +=item * Compilability + +While not yet in full production mode, a working perl-to-C compiler +does exist. It can generate portable bytecode, simple C, or +optimized C code. + =back Ok, that's I<definitely> enough hype. @@ -239,6 +253,12 @@ The command used to get the debugger code. If unset, uses BEGIN { require 'perl5db.pl' } +=item PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL + +Relevant only if your perl executable was built with B<-DDEBUGGING>, +this controls the behavior of global destruction of objects and other +references. + =item PERLLIB A colon-separated list of directories in which to look for Perl library @@ -267,7 +287,7 @@ Larry Wall E<lt>F<larry@wall.org>E<gt>, with the help of oodles of other folks. =head1 FILES "/tmp/perl-e$$" temporary file for -e commands - "@INC" locations of perl 5 libraries + "@INC" locations of perl libraries =head1 SEE ALSO @@ -297,8 +317,8 @@ switch? The B<-w> switch is not mandatory. Perl is at the mercy of your machine's definitions of various -operations such as type casting, atof() and sprintf(). The latter -can even trigger a coredump when passed ludicrous input values. +operations such as type casting, atof(), and sprintf(). The latter +can even trigger a core dump when passed ludicrous input values. 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() @@ -310,7 +330,7 @@ given variable name may not be longer than 255 characters, and no component of your PATH may be longer than 255 if you use B<-S>. A regular expression may not compile to more than 32767 bytes internally. -See the perl bugs database at F<http://perl.com/perl/bugs/>. You may +See the perl bugs database at F<http://www.perl.com/perl/bugs/>. You may mail your bug reports (be sure to include full configuration information as output by the myconfig program in the perl source tree, or by C<perl -V>) to F<perlbug@perl.com>. |