Index of Section 1 Manual Pages
| Interix / SUA | perlfaq.1 | Interix / SUA |
PERLFAQ(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLFAQ(1)
NAME
perlfaq - frequently asked questions about Perl
DESCRIPTION
The perlfaq comprises several documents that answer the
most commonly asked questions about Perl and Perl program-
ming. It's divided by topic into nine major sections out-
lined in this document.
Where to get the perlfaq
The perlfaq comes with the standard Perl distribution, so
if you have Perl you should have the perlfaq. You should
also have the "perldoc" tool that let's you read the perl-
faq:
$ perldoc perlfaq
Besides your local system, you can find the perlfaq on the
web, including at http://perldoc.perl.org/ .
The perlfaq is an evolving document and you can read the
latest version at http://faq.perl.org/ . The perlfaq-work-
ers periodically post extracts of the latest perlfaq to
comp.lang.perl.misc.
You can view the source tree at
http://cvs.perl.org/viewcvs/cvs-public/perlfaq/ (which is
outside of the main Perl source tree). The CVS repository
notes all changes to the FAQ and holds the latest version
of the working documents and may vary significantly from
the version distributed with the latest version of Perl.
Check the repository before sending your corrections.
How to contribute to the perlfaq
You can mail corrections, additions, and suggestions to
"". The perlfaq volun-
teers use this address to coordinate their efforts and
track the perlfaq development. They appreciate your con-
tributions to the FAQ but do not have time to provide
individual help, so don't use this address to ask FAQs.
The perlfaq server posts extracts of the perlfaq to that
newsgroup every 6 hours (or so), and the community of vol-
unteers reviews and updates the answers. If you'd like to
help review and update the answers, check out
comp.lang.perl.misc.
What will happen if you mail your Perl programming prob-
lems to the authors?
The perlfaq-workers like to keep all traffic on the perl-
faq-workers list so that everyone can see the work being
done (and the work that needs to be done). The mailing
list serves as an official record. If you email the
authors or maintainers directly, you'll probably get a
reply asking you to post to the mailing list. If you don't
get a reply, it probably means that the person never saw
the message or didn't have time to deal with it. Posting
to the list allows the volunteers with time to deal with
it when others are busy.
If you have a question that isn't in the FAQ and you would
like help with it, try the resources in perlfaq2.
CREDITS
Tom Christiansen wrote the original perlfaq then expanded
it with the help of Nat Torkington. The perlfaq-workers
maintain current document and the dezinens of
comp.lang.perl.misc regularly review and update the FAQ.
Several people have contributed answers, corrections, and
comments, and the perlfaq notes those contributions wher-
ever appropriate.
AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
Tom Christainsen wrote the original version of this docu-
ment. brian d foy "" wrote this version.
See the individual perlfaq documents for additional copy-
right information.
This document is available under the same terms as Perl
itself. Code examples in all the perlfaq documents are in
the public domain. Use them as you see fit (and at your
own risk with no warranty from anyone).
Table of Contents
perlfaq - this document
perlfaq1 - General Questions About Perl
perlfaq2 - Obtaining and Learning about Perl
perlfaq3 - Programming Tools
perlfaq4 - Data Manipulation
perlfaq5 - Files and Formats
perlfaq6 - Regular Expressions
perlfaq7 - General Perl Language Issues
perlfaq8 - System Interaction
perlfaq9 - Networking
The Questions
perlfaq1: General Questions About Perl
Very general, high-level questions about Perl.
o What is Perl?
o Who supports Perl? Who develops it? Why is it free?
o Which version of Perl should I use?
o What are perl4, perl5, or perl6?
o What is Ponie?
o What is perl6?
o How stable is Perl?
o Is Perl difficult to learn?
o How does Perl compare with other languages like Java,
Python, REXX, Scheme, or Tcl?
o Can I do [task] in Perl?
o When shouldn't I program in Perl?
o What's the difference between "perl" and "Perl"?
o Is it a Perl program or a Perl script?
o What is a JAPH?
o Where can I get a list of Larry Wall witticisms?
o How can I convince my sysadmin/supervisor/employees to
use version 5/5.6.1/Perl instead of some other lan-
guage?
perlfaq2: Obtaining and Learning about Perl
Where to find source and documentation for Perl, support,
and related matters.
o What machines support perl? Where do I get it?
o How can I get a binary version of perl?
o I don't have a C compiler. How can I build my own Perl
interpreter?
o I copied the perl binary from one machine to another,
but scripts don't work.
o I grabbed the sources and tried to compile but
gdbm/dynamic loading/malloc/linking/... failed. How
do I make it work?
o What modules and extensions are available for Perl?
What is CPAN? What does CPAN/src/... mean?
o Is there an ISO or ANSI certified version of Perl?
o Where can I get information on Perl?
o What are the Perl newsgroups on Usenet? Where do I
post questions?
o Where should I post source code?
o Perl Books
o Which magazines have Perl content?
o What mailing lists are there for Perl?
o Where are the archives for comp.lang.perl.misc?
o Where can I buy a commercial version of perl?
o Where do I send bug reports?
o What is perl.com? Perl Mongers? pm.org? perl.org?
cpan.org?
perlfaq3: Programming Tools
Programmer tools and programming support.
o How do I do (anything)?
o How can I use Perl interactively?
o Is there a Perl shell?
o How do I find which modules are installed on my sys-
tem?
o How do I debug my Perl programs?
o How do I profile my Perl programs?
o How do I cross-reference my Perl programs?
o Is there a pretty-printer (formatter) for Perl?
o Is there a ctags for Perl?
o Is there an IDE or Windows Perl Editor?
o Where can I get Perl macros for vi?
o Where can I get perl-mode for emacs?
o How can I use curses with Perl?
o How can I use X or Tk with Perl?
o How can I make my Perl program run faster?
o How can I make my Perl program take less memory?
o Is it safe to return a reference to local or lexical
data?
o How can I free an array or hash so my program shrinks?
o How can I make my CGI script more efficient?
o How can I hide the source for my Perl program?
o How can I compile my Perl program into byte code or C?
o How can I compile Perl into Java?
o How can I get "#!perl" to work on [MS-DOS,NT,...]?
o Can I write useful Perl programs on the command line?
o Why don't Perl one-liners work on my DOS/Mac/VMS sys-
tem?
o Where can I learn about CGI or Web programming in
Perl?
o Where can I learn about object-oriented Perl program-
ming?
o Where can I learn about linking C with Perl?
o I've read perlembed, perlguts, etc., but I can't embed
perl in my C program; what am I doing wrong?
o When I tried to run my script, I got this message.
What does it mean?
o What's MakeMaker?
perlfaq4: Data Manipulation
Manipulating numbers, dates, strings, arrays, hashes, and
miscellaneous data issues.
o Why am I getting long decimals (eg, 19.9499999999999)
instead of the numbers I should be getting (eg,
19.95)?
o Why is int() broken?
o Why isn't my octal data interpreted correctly?
o Does Perl have a round() function? What about ceil()
and floor()? Trig functions?
o How do I convert between numeric representa-
tions/bases/radixes?
o Why doesn't & work the way I want it to?
o How do I multiply matrices?
o How do I perform an operation on a series of integers?
o How can I output Roman numerals?
o Why aren't my random numbers random?
o How do I get a random number between X and Y?
o How do I find the day or week of the year?
o How do I find the current century or millennium?
o How can I compare two dates and find the difference?
o How can I take a string and turn it into epoch sec-
onds?
o How can I find the Julian Day?
o How do I find yesterday's date?
o Does Perl have a Year 2000 problem? Is Perl Y2K com-
pliant?
o How do I validate input?
o How do I unescape a string?
o How do I remove consecutive pairs of characters?
o How do I expand function calls in a string?
o How do I find matching/nesting anything?
o How do I reverse a string?
o How do I expand tabs in a string?
o How do I reformat a paragraph?
o How can I access or change N characters of a string?
o How do I change the Nth occurrence of something?
o How can I count the number of occurrences of a sub-
string within a string?
o How do I capitalize all the words on one line?
o How can I split a [character] delimited string except
when inside [character]?
o How do I strip blank space from the beginning/end of a
string?
o How do I pad a string with blanks or pad a number with
zeroes?
o How do I extract selected columns from a string?
o How do I find the soundex value of a string?
o How can I expand variables in text strings?
o What's wrong with always quoting "$vars"?
o Why don't my <?
o Is there a leak/bug in glob()?
o How can I open a file with a leading ">" or trailing
blanks?
o How can I reliably rename a file?
o How can I lock a file?
o Why can't I just open(FH, ">file.lock")?
o I still don't get locking. I just want to increment
the number in the file. How can I do this?
o All I want to do is append a small amount of text to
the end of a file. Do I still have to use locking?
o How do I randomly update a binary file?
o How do I get a file's timestamp in perl?
o How do I set a file's timestamp in perl?
o How do I print to more than one file at once?
o How can I read in an entire file all at once?
o How can I read in a file by paragraphs?
o How can I read a single character from a file? From
the keyboard?
o How can I tell whether there's a character waiting on
a filehandle?
o How do I do a "tail -f" in perl?
o How do I dup() a filehandle in Perl?
o How do I close a file descriptor by number?
o Why can't I use "C:\temp\foo" in DOS paths? Why
doesn't `C:\temp\foo.exe` work?
o Why doesn't glob("*.*") get all the files?
o Why does Perl let me delete read-only files? Why does
"-i" clobber protected files? Isn't this a bug in
Perl?
o How do I select a random line from a file?
o Why do I get weird spaces when I print an array of
lines?
perlfaq6: Regular Expressions
This section is surprisingly small because the rest of the
FAQ is littered with answers involving regular expres-
sions. For example, decoding a URL and checking whether
something is a number are handled with regular expres-
sions, but those answers are found elsewhere in this docu-
ment (in perlfaq9: "How do I decode or create those
%-encodings on the web" and perlfaq4: "How do I determine
whether a scalar is a number/whole/integer/float", to be
precise).
o How can I hope to use regular expressions without cre-
ating illegible and unmaintainable code?
o I'm having trouble matching over more than one line.
What's wrong?
o How can I pull out lines between two patterns that are
themselves on different lines?
o I put a regular expression into $/ but it didn't work.
What's wrong?
o How do I substitute case insensitively on the LHS
while preserving case on the RHS?
o How can I make "\w" match national character sets?
o How can I match a locale-smart version of
"/[a-zA-Z]/"?
o How can I quote a variable to use in a regex?
o What is "/o" really for?
o How do I use a regular expression to strip C style
comments from a file?
o Can I use Perl regular expressions to match balanced
text?
o What does it mean that regexes are greedy? How can I
get around it?
o How do I process each word on each line?
o How can I print out a word-frequency or line-frequency
summary?
o How can I do approximate matching?
o How do I efficiently match many regular expressions at
once?
o Why don't word-boundary searches with "\b" work for
me?
o Why does using $&, $`, or $' slow my program down?
o What good is "\G" in a regular expression?
o Are Perl regexes DFAs or NFAs? Are they POSIX compli-
ant?
o What's wrong with using grep in a void context?
o How can I match strings with multibyte characters?
o How do I match a pattern that is supplied by the user?
perlfaq7: General Perl Language Issues
General Perl language issues that don't clearly fit into
any of the other sections.
o Can I get a BNF/yacc/RE for the Perl language?
o What are all these $@%&* punctuation signs, and how do
I know when to use them?
o Do I always/never have to quote my strings or use
semicolons and commas?
o How do I skip some return values?
o How do I temporarily block warnings?
o What's an extension?
o Why do Perl operators have different precedence than C
operators?
o How do I declare/create a structure?
o How do I create a module?
o How do I create a class?
o How can I tell if a variable is tainted?
o What's a closure?
o What is variable suicide and how can I prevent it?
o How can I pass/return a {Function, FileHandle, Array,
Hash, Method, Regex}?
o How do I create a static variable?
o What's the difference between dynamic and lexical
(static) scoping? Between local() and my()?
o How can I access a dynamic variable while a similarly
named lexical is in scope?
o What's the difference between deep and shallow bind-
ing?
o Why doesn't "my($foo) = ;" work right?
o How do I redefine a builtin function, operator, or
method?
o What's the difference between calling a function as
&foo and foo()?
o How do I create a switch or case statement?
o How can I catch accesses to undefined variables, func-
tions, or methods?
o Why can't a method included in this same file be
found?
o How can I find out my current package?
o How can I comment out a large block of perl code?
o How do I clear a package?
o How can I use a variable as a variable name?
o What does "bad interpreter" mean?
perlfaq8: System Interaction
This section of the Perl FAQ covers questions involving
operating system interaction. Topics include interprocess
communication (IPC), control over the user-interface (key-
board, screen and pointing devices), and most anything
else not related to data manipulation. Read the FAQs and
documentation specific to the port of perl to your operat-
ing system (eg, perlvms, perlplan9, ...). These should
contain more detailed information on the vagaries of your
perl.
o How do I find out which operating system I'm running
under?
o How come exec() doesn't return?
o How do I do fancy stuff with the key-
board/screen/mouse?
o How do I print something out in color?
o How do I read just one key without waiting for a
return key?
o How do I check whether input is ready on the keyboard?
o How do I clear the screen?
o How do I get the screen size?
o How do I ask the user for a password?
o How do I read and write the serial port?
o How do I decode encrypted password files?
o How do I start a process in the background?
o How do I trap control characters/signals?
o How do I modify the shadow password file on a Unix
system?
o How do I set the time and date?
o How can I sleep() or alarm() for under a second?
o How can I measure time under a second?
o How can I do an atexit() or setjmp()/longjmp()?
(Exception handling)
o Why doesn't my sockets program work under System V
(Solaris)? What does the error message "Protocol not
supported" mean?
o How can I call my system's unique C functions from
Perl?
o Where do I get the include files to do ioctl() or
syscall()?
o Why do setuid perl scripts complain about kernel prob-
lems?
o How can I open a pipe both to and from a command?
o Why can't I get the output of a command with system()?
o How can I capture STDERR from an external command?
o Why doesn't open() return an error when a pipe open
fails?
o What's wrong with using backticks in a void context?
o How can I call backticks without shell processing?
o Why can't my script read from STDIN after I gave it
EOF (^D on Unix, ^Z on MS-DOS)?
o How can I convert my shell script to perl?
o Can I use perl to run a telnet or ftp session?
o How can I write expect in Perl?
o Is there a way to hide perl's command line from pro-
grams such as "ps"?
o I {changed directory, modified my environment} in a
perl script. How come the change disappeared when I
exited the script? How do I get my changes to be vis-
ible?
o How do I close a process's filehandle without waiting
for it to complete?
o How do I fork a daemon process?
o How do I find out if I'm running interactively or not?
o How do I timeout a slow event?
o How do I set CPU limits?
o How do I avoid zombies on a Unix system?
o How do I use an SQL database?
o How do I make a system() exit on control-C?
o How do I open a file without blocking?
o How do I tell the difference between errors from the
shell and perl?
o How do I install a module from CPAN?
o What's the difference between require and use?
o How do I keep my own module/library directory?
o How do I add the directory my program lives in to the
module/library search path?
o How do I add a directory to my include path (@INC) at
runtime?
o What is socket.ph and where do I get it?
perlfaq9: Networking
Networking, the internet, and a few on the web.
o What is the correct form of response from a CGI
script?
o My CGI script runs from the command line but not the
browser. (500 Server Error)
o How can I get better error messages from a CGI pro-
gram?
o How do I remove HTML from a string?
o How do I extract URLs?
o How do I download a file from the user's machine? How
do I open a file on another machine?
o How do I make a pop-up menu in HTML?
o How do I fetch an HTML file?
o How do I automate an HTML form submission?
o How do I decode or create those %-encodings on the
web?
o How do I redirect to another page?
o How do I put a password on my web pages?
o How do I edit my .htpasswd and .htgroup files with
Perl?
o How do I make sure users can't enter values into a
form that cause my CGI script to do bad things?
o How do I parse a mail header?
o How do I decode a CGI form?
o How do I check a valid mail address?
o How do I decode a MIME/BASE64 string?
o How do I return the user's mail address?
o How do I send mail?
o How do I use MIME to make an attachment to a mail mes-
sage?
o How do I read mail?
o How do I find out my hostname, domainname, or IP
address?
o How do I fetch a news article or the active news-
groups?
o How do I fetch/put an FTP file?
o How can I do RPC in Perl?
perl v5.8.8 2006-01-07 PERLFAQ(1)