Perl Pocket Reference, 5th Edition

Appendix A. Command-Line Options

--

Stops processing options.

-0 [ octnum ]

(That’s the number zero.) Designates an initial octal value for the record separator $/. See also -l on the following page.

-a

Turns on autosplit mode when used with -n or -p. Splits to @F.

-c

Checks syntax but does not execute. It does, however, run BEGIN, CHECK, and UNITCHECK blocks.

-C [ number / list ]

Controls some of the Perl Unicode features.

-d[ t ] [ :module ] [ =arg [ ,arg... ] ]

Runs the script under the indicated module. With -dt enable threads. Default module is the Perl debugger. Use -de 0 to start the debugger without a script.

-D flags

Sets debugging flags.

-e commandline

May be used to enter a single line of script. Multiple -e commands build up a multiline script.

-E

Same as -e, but implicitly enables all optional features. See the section Pragmatic Modules.

-F pat

Specifies a pattern on which to split if -a is in effect.

-h

Prints the Perl usage summary. Does not execute.

-i [ ext ]

Activates in-place editing for files processed by the < > construct.

-I dir

The directory is prepended to the search path for Perl modules, @INC.

-l [ octnum ]

(That’s the letter el.) Enables automatic line ending processing, e.g., -l013.

-m[-]module [ =arg [ , arg... ] ]

-M[-]module [ =arg [ , arg... ] ]

Does a use module before executing the script.

With - does a no module instead.

Without arguments, -M imports the default set and -m imports nothing.

Otherwise, the arguments are passed to the module’s import method.

-n

Assumes an input ...