Perl in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

The Perl Manpages

Perl comes with lots of online documentation. To make life easier, the manpages are divided into separate sections so you don’t have to wade through hundreds of pages of text to find what you are looking for. You can read them with either the man command or perldoc. Run man perl or perldoc perl to read the top-level page. This page in turn directs you to more specific pages. Or, if you know which page you want, you can go directly there by using:

% man perlvar

or:

% perldoc perlvar

The following table lists the sections in a logical order for reading through them:

Section	Description
perl	Overview (the top level)
perldelta	Changes since previous version
perlfaq	Frequently asked questions
perltoc	Table of contents for Perl documentation
perldata	Data structures
perlsyn	Syntax
perlop	Operators and precedence
perlre	Regular expressions
perlrun	Execution and options
perlfunc	Built-in functions
perlvar	Predefined variables
perlsub	Subroutines
perlmod	How modules work
perlmodlib	How to write and use modules
perlmodinstall	How to install modules from CPAN
perlform	Formats
perllocale	Locale support
perlref	References
perldsc	Data structures introduction
perllol	Data structures: lists of lists
perltoot	OO tutorial
perlobj	Objects
perltie	Objects hidden behind simple variables
perlbot	OO tricks and examples
perlipc	Interprocess communication
perldebug	Debugging
perldiag	Diagnostic messages
perlsec	Security
perltrap	Traps for the unwary
perlport	Portability guide
perlstyle	Style ...