1=head1 NAME 2 3perlutil - utilities packaged with the Perl distribution 4 5=head1 DESCRIPTION 6 7Along with the Perl interpreter itself, the Perl distribution installs a 8range of utilities on your system. There are also several utilities 9which are used by the Perl distribution itself as part of the install 10process. This document exists to list all of these utilities, explain 11what they are for and provide pointers to each module's documentation, 12if appropriate. 13 14=head1 LIST OF UTILITIES 15 16=head2 Documentation 17 18=over 3 19 20=item L<perldoc|perldoc> 21 22The main interface to Perl's documentation is C<perldoc>, although 23if you're reading this, it's more than likely that you've already found 24it. F<perldoc> will extract and format the documentation from any file 25in the current directory, any Perl module installed on the system, or 26any of the standard documentation pages, such as this one. Use 27C<perldoc E<lt>nameE<gt>> to get information on any of the utilities 28described in this document. 29 30=item L<pod2man|pod2man> and L<pod2text|pod2text> 31 32If it's run from a terminal, F<perldoc> will usually call F<pod2man> to 33translate POD (Plain Old Documentation - see L<perlpod> for an 34explanation) into a manpage, and then run F<man> to display it; if 35F<man> isn't available, F<pod2text> will be used instead and the output 36piped through your favourite pager. 37 38=item L<pod2html|pod2html> 39 40As well as these two, there is another converter: F<pod2html> will 41produce HTML pages from POD. 42 43=item L<pod2usage|pod2usage> 44 45If you just want to know how to use the utilities described here, 46F<pod2usage> will just extract the "USAGE" section; some of 47the utilities will automatically call F<pod2usage> on themselves when 48you call them with C<-help>. 49 50=item L<podchecker|podchecker> 51 52If you're writing your own documentation in POD, the F<podchecker> 53utility will look for errors in your markup. 54 55=item L<splain|splain> 56 57F<splain> is an interface to L<perldiag> - paste in your error message 58to it, and it'll explain it for you. 59 60=item C<roffitall> 61 62The C<roffitall> utility is not installed on your system but lives in 63the F<pod/> directory of your Perl source kit; it converts all the 64documentation from the distribution to F<*roff> format, and produces a 65typeset PostScript or text file of the whole lot. 66 67=back 68 69=head2 Converters 70 71To help you convert legacy programs to more modern Perl, the 72L<pl2pm|pl2pm> utility will help you convert old-style Perl 4 libraries 73to new-style Perl5 modules. 74 75=head2 Administration 76 77=over 3 78 79=item L<libnetcfg|libnetcfg> 80 81To display and change the libnet configuration run the libnetcfg command. 82 83=item L<perlivp> 84 85The F<perlivp> program is set up at Perl source code build time to test 86the Perl version it was built under. It can be used after running C<make 87install> (or your platform's equivalent procedure) to verify that perl 88and its libraries have been installed correctly. 89 90=back 91 92=head2 Development 93 94There are a set of utilities which help you in developing Perl programs, 95and in particular, extending Perl with C. 96 97=over 3 98 99=item L<perlbug|perlbug> 100 101F<perlbug> used to be the recommended way to report bugs in the perl 102interpreter itself or any of the standard library modules back to the 103developers; bug reports and patches should now be submitted to 104L<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues>. 105 106=item L<perlthanks|perlbug> 107 108This program provides an easy way to send a thank-you message back to the 109authors and maintainers of perl. It's just F<perlbug> installed under 110another name. 111 112=item L<h2ph|h2ph> 113 114Back before Perl had the XS system for connecting with C libraries, 115programmers used to get library constants by reading through the C 116header files. You may still see C<require 'syscall.ph'> or similar 117around - the F<.ph> file should be created by running F<h2ph> on the 118corresponding F<.h> file. See the F<h2ph> documentation for more on how 119to convert a whole bunch of header files at once. 120 121=item L<h2xs|h2xs> 122 123F<h2xs> converts C header files into XS modules, and will try and write 124as much glue between C libraries and Perl modules as it can. It's also 125very useful for creating skeletons of pure Perl modules. 126 127=item L<enc2xs> 128 129F<enc2xs> builds a Perl extension for use by Encode from either 130Unicode Character Mapping files (.ucm) or Tcl Encoding Files (.enc). 131Besides being used internally during the build process of the Encode 132module, you can use F<enc2xs> to add your own encoding to perl. 133No knowledge of XS is necessary. 134 135=item L<xsubpp> 136 137F<xsubpp> is a compiler to convert Perl XS code into C code. 138It is typically run by the makefiles created by L<ExtUtils::MakeMaker>. 139 140F<xsubpp> will compile XS code into C code by embedding the constructs 141necessary to let C functions manipulate Perl values and creates the glue 142necessary to let Perl access those functions. 143 144=item L<prove> 145 146F<prove> is a command-line interface to the test-running functionality 147of F<Test::Harness>. It's an alternative to C<make test>. 148 149=item L<corelist> 150 151A command-line front-end to C<Module::CoreList>, to query what modules 152were shipped with given versions of perl. 153 154=back 155 156=head2 General tools 157 158A few general-purpose tools are shipped with perl, mostly because they 159came along modules included in the perl distribution. 160 161=over 3 162 163=item L<piconv> 164 165B<piconv> is a Perl version of B<iconv>, a character encoding converter 166widely available for various Unixen today. This script was primarily a 167technology demonstrator for Perl v5.8.0, but you can use piconv in the 168place of iconv for virtually any case. 169 170=item L<ptar> 171 172F<ptar> is a tar-like program, written in pure Perl. 173 174=item L<ptardiff> 175 176F<ptardiff> is a small utility that produces a diff between an extracted 177archive and an unextracted one. (Note that this utility requires the 178C<Text::Diff> module to function properly; this module isn't distributed 179with perl, but is available from the CPAN.) 180 181=item L<ptargrep> 182 183F<ptargrep> is a utility to apply pattern matching to the contents of files 184in a tar archive. 185 186=item L<shasum> 187 188This utility, that comes with the C<Digest::SHA> module, is used to print 189or verify SHA checksums. 190 191=item L<zipdetails> 192 193L<zipdetails> displays information about the internal record structure of the zip file. 194It is not concerned with displaying any details of the compressed data stored in the zip file. 195 196=back 197 198=head2 Installation 199 200These utilities help manage extra Perl modules that don't come with the perl 201distribution. 202 203=over 3 204 205=item L<cpan> 206 207F<cpan> is a command-line interface to CPAN.pm. It allows you to install 208modules or distributions from CPAN, or just get information about them, and 209a lot more. It is similar to the command line mode of the L<CPAN> module, 210 211 perl -MCPAN -e shell 212 213=item L<instmodsh> 214 215A little interface to ExtUtils::Installed to examine installed modules, 216validate your packlists and even create a tarball from an installed module. 217 218=back 219 220=head1 SEE ALSO 221 222L<perldoc|perldoc>, L<pod2man|pod2man>, L<perlpod>, 223L<pod2html|pod2html>, L<pod2usage|pod2usage>, 224L<podchecker|podchecker>, L<splain|splain>, L<perldiag>, 225C<roffitall|roffitall>, L<File::Find|File::Find>, L<pl2pm|pl2pm>, 226L<perlbug|perlbug>, L<h2ph|h2ph>, L<h2xs|h2xs>, L<enc2xs>, 227L<xsubpp>, L<cpan>, L<instmodsh>, L<piconv>, L<prove>, L<corelist>, L<ptar>, 228L<ptardiff>, L<shasum>, L<zipdetails> 229 230=cut 231