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> 21 22The main interface to Perl's documentation is F<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> 31 32=item L<pod2text> 33 34If it's run from a terminal, F<perldoc> will usually call F<pod2man> to 35translate POD (Plain Old Documentation - see L<perlpod> for an 36explanation) into a manpage, and then run F<man> to display it; if 37F<man> isn't available, F<pod2text> will be used instead and the output 38piped through your favourite pager. 39 40=item L<pod2html> 41 42As well as these two, there is another converter: F<pod2html> will 43produce HTML pages from POD. 44 45=item L<pod2usage> 46 47If you just want to know how to use the utilities described here, 48F<pod2usage> will just extract the "USAGE" section; some of 49the utilities will automatically call F<pod2usage> on themselves when 50you call them with C<-help>. 51 52=item L<podchecker> 53 54If you're writing your own documentation in POD, the F<podchecker> 55utility will look for errors in your markup. 56 57=item L<splain> 58 59F<splain> is an interface to L<perldiag> - paste in your error message 60to it, and it'll explain it for you. 61 62=item F<roffitall> 63 64The F<roffitall> utility is not installed on your system but lives in 65the F<pod/> directory of your Perl source kit; it converts all the 66documentation from the distribution to F<*roff> format, and produces a 67typeset PostScript or text file of the whole lot. 68 69=back 70 71=head2 Converters 72 73=over 3 74 75=item L<pl2pm> 76 77To help you convert legacy programs to more modern Perl, the 78F<pl2pm> utility will help you convert old-style Perl 4 libraries 79to new-style Perl5 modules. 80 81=back 82 83=head2 Administration 84 85=over 3 86 87=item L<libnetcfg> 88 89To display and change the libnet configuration run the libnetcfg command. 90 91=item L<perlivp> 92 93The F<perlivp> program is set up at Perl source code build time to test 94the Perl version it was built under. It can be used after running C<make 95install> (or your platform's equivalent procedure) to verify that perl 96and its libraries have been installed correctly. 97 98=back 99 100=head2 Development 101 102There are a set of utilities which help you in developing Perl programs, 103and in particular, extending Perl with C. 104 105=over 3 106 107=item L<perlbug> 108 109F<perlbug> used to be the recommended way to report bugs in the perl 110interpreter itself or any of the standard library modules back to the 111developers; bug reports and patches should now be submitted to 112L<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues>. 113 114=item L<perlthanks|perlbug> 115 116This program provides an easy way to send a thank-you message back to the 117authors and maintainers of perl. It's just F<perlbug> installed under 118another name. 119 120=item L<h2ph> 121 122Back before Perl had the XS system for connecting with C libraries, 123programmers used to get library constants by reading through the C 124header files. You may still see S<C<require 'syscall.ph'>> or similar 125around - the F<.ph> file should be created by running F<h2ph> on the 126corresponding F<.h> file. See the L<h2ph> documentation for more on how 127to convert a whole bunch of header files at once. 128 129=item L<h2xs> 130 131F<h2xs> converts C header files into XS modules, and will try and write 132as much glue between C libraries and Perl modules as it can. It's also 133very useful for creating skeletons of pure Perl modules. 134 135=item L<enc2xs> 136 137F<enc2xs> builds a Perl extension for use by Encode from either 138Unicode Character Mapping files (.ucm) or Tcl Encoding Files (.enc). 139Besides being used internally during the build process of the Encode 140module, you can use F<enc2xs> to add your own encoding to perl. 141No knowledge of XS is necessary. 142 143=item L<xsubpp> 144 145F<xsubpp> is a compiler to convert Perl XS code into C code. 146It is typically run by the makefiles created by L<ExtUtils::MakeMaker>. 147 148F<xsubpp> will compile XS code into C code by embedding the constructs 149necessary to let C functions manipulate Perl values and creates the glue 150necessary to let Perl access those functions. 151 152=item L<prove> 153 154F<prove> is a command-line interface to the test-running functionality 155of L<Test::Harness>. It's an alternative to C<make test>. 156 157=item L<corelist> 158 159A command-line front-end to L<Module::CoreList>, to query what modules 160were shipped with given versions of perl. 161 162=back 163 164=head2 General tools 165 166A few general-purpose tools are shipped with perl, mostly because they 167came along modules included in the perl distribution. 168 169=over 3 170 171=item L<encguess> 172 173F<encguess> will attempt to guess the character encoding of files. 174 175=item L<json_pp> 176 177F<json_pp> is a pure Perl JSON converter and formatter. 178 179=item L<piconv> 180 181F<piconv> is a Perl version of L<iconv(1)>, a character encoding converter 182widely available for various Unixen today. This script was primarily a 183technology demonstrator for Perl v5.8.0, but you can use piconv in the 184place of iconv for virtually any case. 185 186=item L<ptar> 187 188F<ptar> is a tar-like program, written in pure Perl. 189 190=item L<ptardiff> 191 192F<ptardiff> is a small utility that produces a diff between an extracted 193archive and an unextracted one. (Note that this utility requires the 194L<Text::Diff> module to function properly; this module isn't distributed 195with perl, but is available from the CPAN.) 196 197=item L<ptargrep> 198 199F<ptargrep> is a utility to apply pattern matching to the contents of files 200in a tar archive. 201 202=item L<shasum> 203 204This utility, that comes with the L<Digest::SHA> module, is used to print 205or verify SHA checksums. 206 207=item L<streamzip> 208 209F<streamzip> compresses data streamed to STDIN into a streamed zip container. 210 211=item L<zipdetails> 212 213F<zipdetails> displays information about the internal record structure of the zip file. 214It is not concerned with displaying any details of the compressed data stored in the zip file. 215 216=back 217 218=head2 Installation 219 220These utilities help manage extra Perl modules that don't come with the perl 221distribution. 222 223=over 3 224 225=item L<cpan> 226 227F<cpan> is a command-line interface to CPAN.pm. It allows you to install 228modules or distributions from CPAN, or just get information about them, and 229a lot more. It is similar to the command line mode of the L<CPAN> module, 230 231 perl -MCPAN -e shell 232 233=item L<instmodsh> 234 235A little interface to L<ExtUtils::Installed> to examine installed modules, 236validate your packlists and even create a tarball from an installed module. 237 238=back 239 240=head1 SEE ALSO 241 242L<perldoc>, L<pod2man>, L<pod2text>, L<pod2html>, L<pod2usage>, 243L<podchecker>, L<splain>, L<pl2pm>, 244L<perlbug>, L<h2ph>, L<h2xs>, L<enc2xs>, 245L<xsubpp>, L<cpan>, L<encguess>, L<instmodsh>, L<json_pp>, 246L<piconv>, L<prove>, L<corelist>, L<ptar>, 247L<ptardiff>, L<shasum>, L<streamzip>, L<zipdetails> 248 249=cut 250