perldoc
Display Perl documentation
TLDR
SYNOPSIS
perldoc [options] [PageName|ModuleName|ProgramName|URL]
DESCRIPTION
perldoc is the standard Perl documentation viewer. It looks up and displays documentation written in POD (Plain Old Documentation) format embedded in Perl modules, scripts, and core documentation pages. When invoked with a module name, it searches @INC paths to find and render the module's POD. Without arguments, it displays its own usage.Common documentation pages include perlintro (tutorial), perlfunc (built-in functions), perlvar (special variables), perlre (regular expressions), and perlop (operators).
PARAMETERS
TOPIC
Module name, program name, or documentation page to display.-f FUNCTION
Look up a built-in Perl function by name.-q QUERY
Search the Perl FAQ (perlfaq) for entries matching a regex.-v VARIABLE
Look up a built-in Perl variable (e.g., -v '$!').-m MODULE
Display the module source code rather than its documentation.-t
Plain text output (no man-page formatting).-T
Send output to STDOUT without a pager.-l
Display the file path of the module instead of its documentation.-U
Run in unsafe mode to allow running perldoc as root.
INSTALL
CAVEATS
Documentation is only available for installed modules. Uses the system pager (usually less or more) for display. The -v flag requires quoting the variable to prevent shell interpolation.
HISTORY
perldoc has been part of the core Perl distribution since Perl 5.004 (1997). It replaced the need to manually search for and format POD documentation.