PERLRUN(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLRUN(1)
NAME
perlrun - how to execute the Perl interpreter
SYNOPSIS
perl [ -sTtuUWX ] [ -hv ] [ -V[:configvar] ] [ -cw ] [ -d[t][:debugger] ] [ -D[num-ber/list] -D[number/list]
ber/list] ] [ -pna ] [ -Fpattern ] [ -l[octal] ] [ -0[octal/hexadecimal] ]
[ -Idir ] [ -m[-]module ] [ -M[-]'module...' ] [ -f ] [ -C [nme/it] ] [ -P ]
[ -S ] [ -x[dir] ] [ -i[extension] ] [ -e 'command' ] [ -- ] [ program-file programfile
file ] [ argument ]...
DESCRIPTION
The normal way to run a Perl program is by making it directly executable, or else by passing the name
of the source file as an argument on the command line. (An interactive Perl environment is also pos-sible--see possible--see
sible--see perldebug for details on how to do that.) Upon startup, Perl looks for your program in
one of the following places:
1. Specified line by line via -e switches on the command line.
2. Contained in the file specified by the first filename on the command line. (Note that systems
supporting the #! notation invoke interpreters this way. See "Location of Perl".)
3. Passed in implicitly via standard input. This works only if there are no filename arguments--to
pass arguments to a STDIN-read program you must explicitly specify a "-" for the program name.
With methods 2 and 3, Perl starts parsing the input file from the beginning, unless you've specified
a -x switch, in which case it scans for the first line starting with #! and containing the word
"perl", and starts there instead. This is useful for running a program embedded in a larger message.
(In this case you would indicate the end of the program using the "__END__" token.)
The #! line is always examined for switches as the line is being parsed. Thus, if you're on a
machine that allows only one argument with the #! line, or worse, doesn't even recognize the #! line,
you still can get consistent switch behavior regardless of how Perl was invoked, even if -x was used
to find the beginning of the program.
Because historically some operating systems silently chopped off kernel interpretation of the #! line
after 32 characters, some switches may be passed in on the command line, and some may not; you could
even get a "-" without its letter, if you're not careful. You probably want to make sure that all
your switches fall either before or after that 32-character boundary. Most switches don't actually
care if they're processed redundantly, but getting a "-" instead of a complete switch could cause
Perl to try to execute standard input instead of your program. And a partial -I switch could also
cause odd results.
Some switches do care if they are processed twice, for instance combinations of -l and -0. Either
put all the switches after the 32-character boundary (if applicable), or replace the use of -0digits
by "BEGIN{ $/ = "\0digits"; }".
Parsing of the #! switches starts wherever "perl" is mentioned in the line. The sequences "-*" and
"- " are specifically ignored so that you could, if you were so inclined, say
#!/bin/sh -- # -*- perl -*- -p
eval 'exec perl -wS $0 ${1+"$@"}'
if $running_under_some_shell;
to let Perl see the -p switch.
A similar trick involves the env program, if you have it.
#!/usr/bin/env perl
The examples above use a relative path to the perl interpreter, getting whatever version is first in
the user's path. If you want a specific version of Perl, say, perl5.005_57, you should place that
directly in the #! line's path.
If the #! line does not contain the word "perl", the program named after the #! is executed instead
of the Perl interpreter. This is slightly bizarre, but it helps people on machines that don't do #!,
because they can tell a program that their SHELL is /usr/bin/perl, and Perl will then dispatch the
program to the correct interpreter for them.
After locating your program, Perl compiles the entire program to an internal form. If there are any
compilation errors, execution of the program is not attempted. (This is unlike the typical shell
script, which might run part-way through before finding a syntax error.)
If the program is syntactically correct, it is executed. If the program runs off the end without
hitting an exit() or die() operator, an implicit exit(0) is provided to indicate successful comple-tion. completion.
tion.
#! and quoting on non-Unix systems
Unix's #! technique can be simulated on other systems:
OS/2
Put
extproc perl -S -your_switches
as the first line in "*.cmd" file (-S due to a bug in cmd.exe's `extproc' handling).
MS-DOS
Create a batch file to run your program, and codify it in "ALTERNATE_SHEBANG" (see the dosish.h
file in the source distribution for more information).
Win95/NT
The Win95/NT installation, when using the ActiveState installer for Perl, will modify the Reg-istry Registry
istry to associate the .pl extension with the perl interpreter. If you install Perl by other
means (including building from the sources), you may have to modify the Registry yourself. Note
that this means you can no longer tell the difference between an executable Perl program and a
Perl library file.
Macintosh
Under "Classic" MacOS, a perl program will have the appropriate Creator and Type, so that double-clicking doubleclicking
clicking them will invoke the MacPerl application. Under Mac OS X, clickable apps can be made
from any "#!" script using Wil Sanchez' DropScript utility: http://www.wsanchez.net/software/ .
VMS Put
$ perl -mysw 'f$env("procedure")' 'p1' 'p2' 'p3' 'p4' 'p5' 'p6' 'p7' 'p8' !
$ exit++ + ++$status != 0 and $exit = $status = undef;
at the top of your program, where -mysw are any command line switches you want to pass to Perl.
You can now invoke the program directly, by saying "perl program", or as a DCL procedure, by say-
ing @program (or implicitly via DCL$PATH by just using the name of the program).
This incantation is a bit much to remember, but Perl will display it for you if you say "perl
"-V:startperl"".
Command-interpreters on non-Unix systems have rather different ideas on quoting than Unix shells.
You'll need to learn the special characters in your command-interpreter ("*", "\" and """ are common)
and how to protect whitespace and these characters to run one-liners (see -e below).
On some systems, you may have to change single-quotes to double ones, which you must not do on Unix
or Plan 9 systems. You might also have to change a single % to a %%.
For example:
# Unix
perl -e 'print "Hello world\n"'
# MS-DOS, etc.
perl -e "print \"Hello world\n\""
# Macintosh
print "Hello world\n"
(then Run "Myscript" or Shift-Command-R)
# VMS
perl -e "print ""Hello world\n"""
The problem is that none of this is reliable: it depends on the command and it is entirely possible
neither works. If 4DOS were the command shell, this would probably work better:
perl -e "print <Ctrl-x>"Hello world\n<Ctrl-x>""
CMD.EXE in Windows NT slipped a lot of standard Unix functionality in when nobody was looking, but
just try to find documentation for its quoting rules.
Under the Macintosh, it depends which environment you are using. The MacPerl shell, or MPW, is much
like Unix shells in its support for several quoting variants, except that it makes free use of the
Macintosh's non-ASCII characters as control characters.
There is no general solution to all of this. It's just a mess.
Location of Perl
It may seem obvious to say, but Perl is useful only when users can easily find it. When possible,
it's good for both /usr/bin/perl and /usr/local/bin/perl to be symlinks to the actual binary. If
that can't be done, system administrators are strongly encouraged to put (symlinks to) perl and its
accompanying utilities into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in some other obvious
and convenient place.
In this documentation, "#!/usr/bin/perl" on the first line of the program will stand in for whatever
method works on your system. You are advised to use a specific path if you care about a specific
version.
#!/usr/local/bin/perl5.00554
or if you just want to be running at least version, place a statement like this at the top of your
program:
use 5.005_54;
Command Switches
As with all standard commands, a single-character switch may be clustered with the following switch,
if any.
#!/usr/bin/perl -spi.orig # same as -s -p -i.orig
Switches include:
-0[octal/hexadecimal]
specifies the input record separator ($/) as an octal or hexadecimal number. If there are no
digits, the null character is the separator. Other switches may precede or follow the digits.
For example, if you have a version of find which can print filenames terminated by the null
character, you can say this:
find . -name '*.orig' -print0 | perl -n0e unlink
The special value 00 will cause Perl to slurp files in paragraph mode. The value 0777 will
cause Perl to slurp files whole because there is no legal byte with that value.
If you want to specify any Unicode character, use the hexadecimal format: "-0xHHH...", where the
"H" are valid hexadecimal digits. (This means that you cannot use the "-x" with a directory
name that consists of hexadecimal digits.)
-a turns on autosplit mode when used with a -n or -p. An implicit split command to the @F array is
done as the first thing inside the implicit while loop produced by the -n or -p.
perl -ane 'print pop(@F), "\n";'
is equivalent to
while (<>) {
@F = split(' ');
print pop(@F), "\n";
}
An alternate delimiter may be specified using -F.
-C [nme/it]
The "-C" flag controls some Unicode of the Perl Unicode features.
As of 5.8.1, the "-C" can be followed either by a number or a list of option letters. The let-
ters, their numeric values, and effects are as follows; listing the letters is equal to summing
the numbers.
I 1 STDIN is assumed to be in UTF-8
O 2 STDOUT will be in UTF-8
E 4 STDERR will be in UTF-8
S 7 I + O + E
i 8 UTF-8 is the default PerlIO layer for input streams
o 16 UTF-8 is the default PerlIO layer for output streams
D 24 i + o
A 32 the @ARGV elements are expected to be strings encoded in UTF-8
L 64 normally the "IOEioA" are unconditional,
the L makes them conditional on the locale environment
variables (the LC_ALL, LC_TYPE, and LANG, in the order
of decreasing precedence) -- if the variables indicate
UTF-8, then the selected "IOEioA" are in effect
For example, "-COE" and "-C6" will both turn on UTF-8-ness on both STDOUT and STDERR. Repeating
letters is just redundant, not cumulative nor toggling.
The "io" options mean that any subsequent open() (or similar I/O operations) will have the
":utf8" PerlIO layer implicitly applied to them, in other words, UTF-8 is expected from any
input stream, and UTF-8 is produced to any output stream. This is just the default, with
explicit layers in open() and with binmode() one can manipulate streams as usual.
"-C" on its own (not followed by any number or option list), or the empty string "" for the
"PERL_UNICODE" environment variable, has the same effect as "-CSDL". In other words, the stan-
dard I/O handles and the default "open()" layer are UTF-8-fied but only if the locale environ-
ment variables indicate a UTF-8 locale. This behaviour follows the implicit (and problematic)
UTF-8 behaviour of Perl 5.8.0.
You can use "-C0" (or "0" for "PERL_UNICODE") to explicitly disable all the above Unicode fea-
tures.
The read-only magic variable "${^UNICODE}" reflects the numeric value of this setting. This is
variable is set during Perl startup and is thereafter read-only. If you want runtime effects,
use the three-arg open() (see "open" in perlfunc), the two-arg binmode() (see "binmode" in perl-
func), and the "open" pragma (see open).
(In Perls earlier than 5.8.1 the "-C" switch was a Win32-only switch that enabled the use of
Unicode-aware "wide system call" Win32 APIs. This feature was practically unused, however, and
the command line switch was therefore "recycled".)
-c causes Perl to check the syntax of the program and then exit without executing it. Actually, it
will execute "BEGIN", "CHECK", and "use" blocks, because these are considered as occurring out-
side the execution of your program. "INIT" and "END" blocks, however, will be skipped.
-d
-dt runs the program under the Perl debugger. See perldebug. If t is specified, it indicates to
the debugger that threads will be used in the code being debugged.
-d:foo[=bar,baz]
-dt:foo[=bar,baz]
runs the program under the control of a debugging, profiling, or tracing module installed as
Devel::foo. E.g., -d:DProf executes the program using the Devel::DProf profiler. As with the -M
flag, options may be passed to the Devel::foo package where they will be received and inter-
preted by the Devel::foo::import routine. The comma-separated list of options must follow a "="
character. If t is specified, it indicates to the debugger that threads will be used in the
code being debugged. See perldebug.
-Dletters
-Dnumber
sets debugging flags. To watch how it executes your program, use -Dtls. (This works only if
debugging is compiled into your Perl.) Another nice value is -Dx, which lists your compiled
syntax tree. And -Dr displays compiled regular expressions; the format of the output is
explained in perldebguts.
As an alternative, specify a number instead of list of letters (e.g., -D14 is equivalent to
-Dtls):
1 p Tokenizing and parsing
2 s Stack snapshots (with v, displays all stacks)
4 l Context (loop) stack processing
8 t Trace execution
16 o Method and overloading resolution
32 c String/numeric conversions
64 P Print profiling info, preprocessor command for -P, source file input state
128 m Memory allocation
256 f Format processing
512 r Regular expression parsing and execution
1024 x Syntax tree dump
2048 u Tainting checks
4096 (Obsolete, previously used for LEAKTEST)
8192 H Hash dump -- usurps values()
16384 X Scratchpad allocation
32768 D Cleaning up
65536 S Thread synchronization
131072 T Tokenising
262144 R Include reference counts of dumped variables (eg when using -Ds)
524288 J Do not s,t,P-debug (Jump over) opcodes within package DB
1048576 v Verbose: use in conjunction with other flags
8388608 q quiet - currently only suppresses the "EXECUTING" message
All these flags require -DDEBUGGING when you compile the Perl executable (but see Devel::Peek,
re which may change this). See the INSTALL file in the Perl source distribution for how to do
this. This flag is automatically set if you include -g option when "Configure" asks you about
optimizer/debugger flags.
If you're just trying to get a print out of each line of Perl code as it executes, the way that
"sh -x" provides for shell scripts, you can't use Perl's -D switch. Instead do this
# If you have "env" utility
env PERLDB_OPTS="NonStop=1 AutoTrace=1 frame=2" perl -dS program
# Bourne shell syntax
$ PERLDB_OPTS="NonStop=1 AutoTrace=1 frame=2" perl -dS program
# csh syntax
% (setenv PERLDB_OPTS "NonStop=1 AutoTrace=1 frame=2"; perl -dS program)
See perldebug for details and variations.
-e commandline
may be used to enter one line of program. If -e is given, Perl will not look for a filename in
the argument list. Multiple -e commands may be given to build up a multi-line script. Make
sure to use semicolons where you would in a normal program.
-f Disable executing $Config{sitelib}/sitecustomize.pl at startup.
Perl can be built so that it by default will try to execute $Config{sitelib}/sitecustomize.pl at
startup. This is a hook that allows the sysadmin to customize how perl behaves. It can for
instance be used to add entries to the @INC array to make perl find modules in non-standard
locations.
-Fpattern
specifies the pattern to split on if -a is also in effect. The pattern may be surrounded by
"//", "", or '', otherwise it will be put in single quotes. You can't use literal whitespace in
the pattern.
-h prints a summary of the options.
-i[extension]
specifies that files processed by the "<>" construct are to be edited in-place. It does this by
renaming the input file, opening the output file by the original name, and selecting that output
file as the default for print() statements. The extension, if supplied, is used to modify the
name of the old file to make a backup copy, following these rules:
If no extension is supplied, no backup is made and the current file is overwritten.
If the extension doesn't contain a "*", then it is appended to the end of the current filename
as a suffix. If the extension does contain one or more "*" characters, then each "*" is
replaced with the current filename. In Perl terms, you could think of this as:
($backup = $extension) =~ s/\*/$file_name/g;
This allows you to add a prefix to the backup file, instead of (or in addition to) a suffix:
$ perl -pi'orig_*' -e 's/bar/baz/' fileA # backup to 'orig_fileA'
Or even to place backup copies of the original files into another directory (provided the direc-
tory already exists):
$ perl -pi'old/*.orig' -e 's/bar/baz/' fileA # backup to 'old/fileA.orig'
These sets of one-liners are equivalent:
$ perl -pi -e 's/bar/baz/' fileA # overwrite current file
$ perl -pi'*' -e 's/bar/baz/' fileA # overwrite current file
$ perl -pi'.orig' -e 's/bar/baz/' fileA # backup to 'fileA.orig'
$ perl -pi'*.orig' -e 's/bar/baz/' fileA # backup to 'fileA.orig'
From the shell, saying
$ perl -p -i.orig -e "s/foo/bar/; ... "
is the same as using the program:
#!/usr/bin/perl -pi.orig
s/foo/bar/;
which is equivalent to
#!/usr/bin/perl
$extension = '.orig';
LINE: while (<>) {
if ($ARGV ne $oldargv) {
if ($extension !~ /\*/) {
$backup = $ARGV . $extension;
}
else {
($backup = $extension) =~ s/\*/$ARGV/g;
}
rename($ARGV, $backup);
open(ARGVOUT, ">$ARGV");
select(ARGVOUT);
$oldargv = $ARGV;
}
s/foo/bar/;
}
continue {
print; # this prints to original filename
}
select(STDOUT);
except that the -i form doesn't need to compare $ARGV to $oldargv to know when the filename has
changed. It does, however, use ARGVOUT for the selected filehandle. Note that STDOUT is
restored as the default output filehandle after the loop.
As shown above, Perl creates the backup file whether or not any output is actually changed. So
this is just a fancy way to copy files:
$ perl -p -i'/some/file/path/*' -e 1 file1 file2 file3...
or
$ perl -p -i'.orig' -e 1 file1 file2 file3...
You can use "eof" without parentheses to locate the end of each input file, in case you want to
append to each file, or reset line numbering (see example in "eof" in perlfunc).
If, for a given file, Perl is unable to create the backup file as specified in the extension
then it will skip that file and continue on with the next one (if it exists).
For a discussion of issues surrounding file permissions and -i, see "Why does Perl let me delete
read-only files? Why does -i clobber protected files? Isn't this a bug in Perl?" in perlfaq5.
You cannot use -i to create directories or to strip extensions from files.
Perl does not expand "~" in filenames, which is good, since some folks use it for their backup
files:
$ perl -pi~ -e 's/foo/bar/' file1 file2 file3...
Note that because -i renames or deletes the original file before creating a new file of the same
name, UNIX-style soft and hard links will not be preserved.
Finally, the -i switch does not impede execution when no files are given on the command line.
In this case, no backup is made (the original file cannot, of course, be determined) and pro-
cessing proceeds from STDIN to STDOUT as might be expected.
-Idirectory
Directories specified by -I are prepended to the search path for modules (@INC), and also tells
the C preprocessor where to search for include files. The C preprocessor is invoked with -P; by
default it searches /usr/include and /usr/lib/perl.
-l[octnum]
enables automatic line-ending processing. It has two separate effects. First, it automatically
chomps $/ (the input record separator) when used with -n or -p. Second, it assigns "$\" (the
output record separator) to have the value of octnum so that any print statements will have that
separator added back on. If octnum is omitted, sets "$\" to the current value of $/. For
instance, to trim lines to 80 columns:
perl -lpe 'substr($_, 80) = ""'
Note that the assignment "$\ = $/" is done when the switch is processed, so the input record
separator can be different than the output record separator if the -l switch is followed by a -0
switch:
gnufind / -print0 | perl -ln0e 'print "found $_" if -p'
This sets "$\" to newline and then sets $/ to the null character.
-m[-]module
-M[-]module
-M[-]'module ...'
-[mM][-]module=arg[,arg]...
-mmodule executes "use" module "();" before executing your program.
-Mmodule executes "use" module ";" before executing your program. You can use quotes to add
extra code after the module name, e.g., '-Mmodule qw(foo bar)'.
If the first character after the -M or -m is a dash ("-") then the 'use' is replaced with 'no'.
A little builtin syntactic sugar means you can also say -mmodule=foo,bar or -Mmodule=foo,bar as
a shortcut for '-Mmodule qw(foo bar)'. This avoids the need to use quotes when importing sym-
bols. The actual code generated by -Mmodule=foo,bar is "use module split(/,/,q{foo,bar})".
Note that the "=" form removes the distinction between -m and -M.
A consequence of this is that -MFoo=number never does a version check (unless "Foo::import()"
itself is set up to do a version check, which could happen for example if Foo inherits from
Exporter.)
-n causes Perl to assume the following loop around your program, which makes it iterate over file-
name arguments somewhat like sed -n or awk:
LINE:
while (<>) {
... # your program goes here
}
Note that the lines are not printed by default. See -p to have lines printed. If a file named
by an argument cannot be opened for some reason, Perl warns you about it and moves on to the
next file.
Here is an efficient way to delete all files that haven't been modified for at least a week:
find . -mtime +7 -print | perl -nle unlink
This is faster than using the -exec switch of find because you don't have to start a process on
every filename found. It does suffer from the bug of mishandling newlines in pathnames, which
you can fix if you follow the example under -0.
"BEGIN" and "END" blocks may be used to capture control before or after the implicit program
loop, just as in awk.
-p causes Perl to assume the following loop around your program, which makes it iterate over file-
name arguments somewhat like sed:
LINE:
while (<>) {
... # your program goes here
} continue {
print or die "-p destination: $!\n";
}
If a file named by an argument cannot be opened for some reason, Perl warns you about it, and
moves on to the next file. Note that the lines are printed automatically. An error occurring
during printing is treated as fatal. To suppress printing use the -n switch. A -p overrides a
-n switch.
"BEGIN" and "END" blocks may be used to capture control before or after the implicit loop, just
as in awk.
-P NOTE: Use of -P is strongly discouraged because of its inherent problems, including poor porta-
bility.
This option causes your program to be run through the C preprocessor before compilation by Perl.
Because both comments and cpp directives begin with the # character, you should avoid starting
comments with any words recognized by the C preprocessor such as "if", "else", or "define".
If you're considering using "-P", you might also want to look at the Filter::cpp module from
CPAN.
The problems of -P include, but are not limited to:
* The "#!" line is stripped, so any switches there don't apply.
* A "-P" on a "#!" line doesn't work.
* All lines that begin with (whitespace and) a "#" but do not look like cpp commands,
are stripped, including anything inside Perl strings, regular expressions, and here-
docs .
* In some platforms the C preprocessor knows too much: it knows about the C++ -style
until-end-of-line comments starting with "//". This will cause problems with common
Perl constructs like
s/foo//;
because after -P this will became illegal code
s/foo
The workaround is to use some other quoting separator than "/", like for example "!":
s!foo!!;
* It requires not only a working C preprocessor but also a working sed. If not on UNIX,
you are probably out of luck on this.
* Script line numbers are not preserved.
* The "-x" does not work with "-P".
-s enables rudimentary switch parsing for switches on the command line after the program name but
before any filename arguments (or before an argument of --). Any switch found there is removed
from @ARGV and sets the corresponding variable in the Perl program. The following program
prints "1" if the program is invoked with a -xyz switch, and "abc" if it is invoked with
-xyz=abc.
#!/usr/bin/perl -s
if ($xyz) { print "$xyz\n" }
Do note that a switch like --help creates the variable ${-help}, which is not compliant with
"strict refs". Also, when using this option on a script with warnings enabled you may get a lot
of spurious "used only once" warnings.
-S makes Perl use the PATH environment variable to search for the program (unless the name of the
program contains directory separators).
On some platforms, this also makes Perl append suffixes to the filename while searching for it.
For example, on Win32 platforms, the ".bat" and ".cmd" suffixes are appended if a lookup for the
original name fails, and if the name does not already end in one of those suffixes. If your
Perl was compiled with DEBUGGING turned on, using the -Dp switch to Perl shows how the search
progresses.
Typically this is used to emulate #! startup on platforms that don't support #!. Its also con-
venient when debugging a script that uses #!, and is thus normally found by the shell's $PATH
search mechanism.
This example works on many platforms that have a shell compatible with Bourne shell:
#!/usr/bin/perl
eval 'exec /usr/bin/perl -wS $0 ${1+"$@"}'
if $running_under_some_shell;
The system ignores the first line and feeds the program to /bin/sh, which proceeds to try to
execute the Perl program as a shell script. The shell executes the second line as a normal
shell command, and thus starts up the Perl interpreter. On some systems $0 doesn't always con-
tain the full pathname, so the -S tells Perl to search for the program if necessary. After Perl
locates the program, it parses the lines and ignores them because the variable $run-
ning_under_some_shell is never true. If the program will be interpreted by csh, you will need
to replace "${1+"$@"}" with $*, even though that doesn't understand embedded spaces (and such)
in the argument list. To start up sh rather than csh, some systems may have to replace the #!
line with a line containing just a colon, which will be politely ignored by Perl. Other systems
can't control that, and need a totally devious construct that will work under any of csh, sh, or
Perl, such as the following:
eval '(exit $?0)' && eval 'exec perl -wS $0 ${1+"$@"}'
& eval 'exec /usr/bin/perl -wS $0 $argv:q'
if $running_under_some_shell;
If the filename supplied contains directory separators (i.e., is an absolute or relative path-
name), and if that file is not found, platforms that append file extensions will do so and try
to look for the file with those extensions added, one by one.
On DOS-like platforms, if the program does not contain directory separators, it will first be
searched for in the current directory before being searched for on the PATH. On Unix platforms,
the program will be searched for strictly on the PATH.
-t Like -T, but taint checks will issue warnings rather than fatal errors. These warnings can be
controlled normally with "no warnings qw(taint)".
NOTE: this is not a substitute for -T. This is meant only to be used as a temporary development
aid while securing legacy code: for real production code and for new secure code written from
scratch always use the real -T.
-T forces "taint" checks to be turned on so you can test them. Ordinarily these checks are done
only when running setuid or setgid. It's a good idea to turn them on explicitly for programs
that run on behalf of someone else whom you might not necessarily trust, such as CGI programs or
any internet servers you might write in Perl. See perlsec for details. For security reasons,
this option must be seen by Perl quite early; usually this means it must appear early on the
command line or in the #! line for systems which support that construct.
-u This obsolete switch causes Perl to dump core after compiling your program. You can then in
theory take this core dump and turn it into an executable file by using the undump program (not
supplied). This speeds startup at the expense of some disk space (which you can minimize by
stripping the executable). (Still, a "hello world" executable comes out to about 200K on my
machine.) If you want to execute a portion of your program before dumping, use the dump() oper-
ator instead. Note: availability of undump is platform specific and may not be available for a
specific port of Perl.
This switch has been superseded in favor of the new Perl code generator backends to the com-
piler. See B and B::Bytecode for details.
-U allows Perl to do unsafe operations. Currently the only "unsafe" operations are attempting to
unlink directories while running as superuser, and running setuid programs with fatal taint
checks turned into warnings. Note that the -w switch (or the $^W variable) must be used along
with this option to actually generate the taint-check warnings.
-v prints the version and patchlevel of your perl executable.
-V prints summary of the major perl configuration values and the current values of @INC.
-V:configvar
Prints to STDOUT the value of the named configuration variable(s), with multiples when your con-
figvar argument looks like a regex (has non-letters). For example:
$ perl -V:libc
libc='/lib/libc-2.2.4.so';
$ perl -V:lib.
libs='-lnsl -lgdbm -ldb -ldl -lm -lcrypt -lutil -lc';
libc='/lib/libc-2.2.4.so';
$ perl -V:lib.*
libpth='/usr/local/lib /lib /usr/lib';
libs='-lnsl -lgdbm -ldb -ldl -lm -lcrypt -lutil -lc';
lib_ext='.a';
libc='/lib/libc-2.2.4.so';
libperl='libperl.a';
....
Additionally, extra colons can be used to control formatting. A trailing colon suppresses the
linefeed and terminator ';', allowing you to embed queries into shell commands. (mnemonic: PATH
separator ':'.)
$ echo "compression-vars: " `perl -V:z.*: ` " are here !"
compression-vars: zcat='' zip='zip' are here !
A leading colon removes the 'name=' part of the response, this allows you to map to the name you
need. (mnemonic: empty label)
$ echo "goodvfork="`./perl -Ilib -V::usevfork`
goodvfork=false;
Leading and trailing colons can be used together if you need positional parameter values without
the names. Note that in the case below, the PERL_API params are returned in alphabetical order.
$ echo building_on `perl -V::osname: -V::PERL_API_.*:` now
building_on 'linux' '5' '1' '9' now
-w prints warnings about dubious constructs, such as variable names that are mentioned only once
and scalar variables that are used before being set, redefined subroutines, references to unde-
fined filehandles or filehandles opened read-only that you are attempting to write on, values
used as a number that don't look like numbers, using an array as though it were a scalar, if
your subroutines recurse more than 100 deep, and innumerable other things.
This switch really just enables the internal $^W variable. You can disable or promote into
fatal errors specific warnings using "__WARN__" hooks, as described in perlvar and "warn" in
perlfunc. See also perldiag and perltrap. A new, fine-grained warning facility is also avail-
able if you want to manipulate entire classes of warnings; see warnings or perllexwarn.
-W Enables all warnings regardless of "no warnings" or $^W. See perllexwarn.
-X Disables all warnings regardless of "use warnings" or $^W. See perllexwarn.
-x
-x directory
tells Perl that the program is embedded in a larger chunk of unrelated ASCII text, such as in a
mail message. Leading garbage will be discarded until the first line that starts with #! and
contains the string "perl". Any meaningful switches on that line will be applied. If a direc-
tory name is specified, Perl will switch to that directory before running the program. The -x
switch controls only the disposal of leading garbage. The program must be terminated with
"__END__" if there is trailing garbage to be ignored (the program can process any or all of the
trailing garbage via the DATA filehandle if desired).
ENVIRONMENT
HOME Used if chdir has no argument.
LOGDIR Used if chdir has no argument and HOME is not set.
PATH Used in executing subprocesses, and in finding the program if -S is used.
PERL5LIB A list of directories in which to look for Perl library files before looking in the stan-
dard library and the current directory. Any architecture-specific directories under the
specified locations are automatically included if they exist. If PERL5LIB is not
defined, PERLLIB is used. Directories are separated (like in PATH) by a colon on unixish
platforms and by a semicolon on Windows (the proper path separator being given by the
command "perl -V:path_sep").
When running taint checks (either because the program was running setuid or setgid, or
the -T switch was used), neither variable is used. The program should instead say:
use lib "/my/directory";
PERL5OPT Command-line options (switches). Switches in this variable are taken as if they were on
every Perl command line. Only the -[DIMUdmtw] switches are allowed. When running taint
checks (because the program was running setuid or setgid, or the -T switch was used),
this variable is ignored. If PERL5OPT begins with -T, tainting will be enabled, and any
subsequent options ignored.
PERLIO A space (or colon) separated list of PerlIO layers. If perl is built to use PerlIO system
for IO (the default) these layers effect perl's IO.
It is conventional to start layer names with a colon e.g. ":perlio" to emphasise their
similarity to variable "attributes". But the code that parses layer specification strings
(which is also used to decode the PERLIO environment variable) treats the colon as a sep-
arator.
An unset or empty PERLIO is equivalent to ":stdio".
The list becomes the default for all perl's IO. Consequently only built-in layers can
appear in this list, as external layers (such as :encoding()) need IO in order to load
them!. See "open pragma" for how to add external encodings as defaults.
The layers that it makes sense to include in the PERLIO environment variable are briefly
summarised below. For more details see PerlIO.
:bytes A pseudolayer that turns off the ":utf8" flag for the layer below. Unlikely to
be useful on its own in the global PERLIO environment variable. You perhaps were
thinking of ":crlf:bytes" or ":perlio:bytes".
:crlf A layer which does CRLF to "\n" translation distinguishing "text" and "binary"
files in the manner of MS-DOS and similar operating systems. (It currently does
not mimic MS-DOS as far as treating of Control-Z as being an end-of-file marker.)
:mmap A layer which implements "reading" of files by using "mmap()" to make (whole)
file appear in the process's address space, and then using that as PerlIO's
"buffer".
:perlio This is a re-implementation of "stdio-like" buffering written as a PerlIO
"layer". As such it will call whatever layer is below it for its operations
(typically ":unix").
:pop An experimental pseudolayer that removes the topmost layer. Use with the same
care as is reserved for nitroglycerin.
:raw A pseudolayer that manipulates other layers. Applying the ":raw" layer is equiv-
alent to calling "binmode($fh)". It makes the stream pass each byte as-is with-
out any translation. In particular CRLF translation, and/or :utf8 intuited from
locale are disabled.
Unlike in the earlier versions of Perl ":raw" is not just the inverse of ":crlf"
- other layers which would affect the binary nature of the stream are also
removed or disabled.
:stdio This layer provides PerlIO interface by wrapping system's ANSI C "stdio" library
calls. The layer provides both buffering and IO. Note that ":stdio" layer does
not do CRLF translation even if that is platforms normal behaviour. You will need
a ":crlf" layer above it to do that.
:unix Low level layer which calls "read", "write" and "lseek" etc.
:utf8 A pseudolayer that turns on a flag on the layer below to tell perl that output
should be in utf8 and that input should be regarded as already in utf8 form. May
be useful in PERLIO environment variable to make UTF-8 the default. (To turn off
that behaviour use ":bytes" layer.)
:win32 On Win32 platforms this experimental layer uses native "handle" IO rather than
unix-like numeric file descriptor layer. Known to be buggy in this release.
On all platforms the default set of layers should give acceptable results.
For UNIX platforms that will equivalent of "unix perlio" or "stdio". Configure is setup
to prefer "stdio" implementation if system's library provides for fast access to the
buffer, otherwise it uses the "unix perlio" implementation.
On Win32 the default in this release is "unix crlf". Win32's "stdio" has a number of
bugs/mis-features for perl IO which are somewhat C compiler vendor/version dependent.
Using our own "crlf" layer as the buffer avoids those issues and makes things more uni-
form. The "crlf" layer provides CRLF to/from "\n" conversion as well as buffering.
This release uses "unix" as the bottom layer on Win32 and so still uses C compiler's
numeric file descriptor routines. There is an experimental native "win32" layer which is
expected to be enhanced and should eventually be the default under Win32.
PERLIO_DEBUG
If set to the name of a file or device then certain operations of PerlIO sub-system will
be logged to that file (opened as append). Typical uses are UNIX:
PERLIO_DEBUG=/dev/tty perl script ...
and Win32 approximate equivalent:
set PERLIO_DEBUG=CON
perl script ...
This functionality is disabled for setuid scripts and for scripts run with -T.
PERLLIB A list of directories in which to look for Perl library files before looking in the stan-
dard library and the current directory. If PERL5LIB is defined, PERLLIB is not used.
PERL5DB The command used to load the debugger code. The default is:
BEGIN { require 'perl5db.pl' }
PERL5DB_THREADED
If set to a true value, indicates to the debugger that the code being debugged uses
threads.
PERL5SHELL (specific to the Win32 port)
May be set to an alternative shell that perl must use internally for executing "backtick"
commands or system(). Default is "cmd.exe /x/d/c" on WindowsNT and "command.com /c" on
Windows95. The value is considered to be space-separated. Precede any character that
needs to be protected (like a space or backslash) with a backslash.
Note that Perl doesn't use COMSPEC for this purpose because COMSPEC has a high degree of
variability among users, leading to portability concerns. Besides, perl can use a shell
that may not be fit for interactive use, and setting COMSPEC to such a shell may inter-
fere with the proper functioning of other programs (which usually look in COMSPEC to find
a shell fit for interactive use).
PERL_ALLOW_NON_IFS_LSP (specific to the Win32 port)
Set to 1 to allow the use of non-IFS compatible LSP's. Perl normally searches for an
IFS-compatible LSP because this is required for its emulation of Windows sockets as real
filehandles. However, this may cause problems if you have a firewall such as McAfee
Guardian which requires all applications to use its LSP which is not IFS-compatible,
because clearly Perl will normally avoid using such an LSP. Setting this environment
variable to 1 means that Perl will simply use the first suitable LSP enumerated in the
catalog, which keeps McAfee Guardian happy (and in that particular case Perl still works
too because McAfee Guardian's LSP actually plays some other games which allow applica-
tions requiring IFS compatibility to work).
PERL_DEBUG_MSTATS
Relevant only if perl is compiled with the malloc included with the perl distribution
(that is, if "perl -V:d_mymalloc" is 'define'). If set, this causes memory statistics to
be dumped after execution. If set to an integer greater than one, also causes memory
statistics to be dumped after compilation.
PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL
Relevant only if your perl executable was built with -DDEBUGGING, this controls the
behavior of global destruction of objects and other references. See
"PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL" in perlhack for more information.
PERL_DL_NONLAZY
Set to one to have perl resolve all undefined symbols when it loads a dynamic library.
The default behaviour is to resolve symbols when they are used. Setting this variable is
useful during testing of extensions as it ensures that you get an error on misspelled
function names even if the test suite doesn't call it.
PERL_ENCODING
If using the "encoding" pragma without an explicit encoding name, the PERL_ENCODING envi-
ronment variable is consulted for an encoding name.
PERL_HASH_SEED
(Since Perl 5.8.1.) Used to randomise Perl's internal hash function. To emulate the
pre-5.8.1 behaviour, set to an integer (zero means exactly the same order as 5.8.0).
"Pre-5.8.1" means, among other things, that hash keys will be ordered the same between
different runs of Perl.
The default behaviour is to randomise unless the PERL_HASH_SEED is set. If Perl has been
compiled with "-DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT", the default behaviour is not to randomise
unless the PERL_HASH_SEED is set.
If PERL_HASH_SEED is unset or set to a non-numeric string, Perl uses the pseudorandom
seed supplied by the operating system and libraries. This means that each different run
of Perl will have a different ordering of the results of keys(), values(), and each().
Please note that the hash seed is sensitive information. Hashes are randomized to protect
against local and remote attacks against Perl code. By manually setting a seed this pro-
tection may be partially or completely lost.
See "Algorithmic Complexity Attacks" in perlsec and "PERL_HASH_SEED_DEBUG" for more
information.
PERL_HASH_SEED_DEBUG
(Since Perl 5.8.1.) Set to one to display (to STDERR) the value of the hash seed at the
beginning of execution. This, combined with "PERL_HASH_SEED" is intended to aid in
debugging nondeterministic behavior caused by hash randomization.
Note that the hash seed is sensitive information: by knowing it one can craft a denial-
of-service attack against Perl code, even remotely, see "Algorithmic Complexity Attacks"
in perlsec for more information. Do not disclose the hash seed to people who don't need
to know it. See also hash_seed() of Hash::Util.
PERL_ROOT (specific to the VMS port)
A translation concealed rooted logical name that contains perl and the logical device for
the @INC path on VMS only. Other logical names that affect perl on VMS include PERLSHR,
PERL_ENV_TABLES, and SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL but are optional and discussed further in
perlvms and in README.vms in the Perl source distribution.
PERL_SIGNALS
In Perls 5.8.1 and later. If set to "unsafe" the pre-Perl-5.8.0 signals behaviour (imme-
diate but unsafe) is restored. If set to "safe" the safe (or deferred) signals are used.
See "Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)" in perlipc.
PERL_UNICODE
Equivalent to the -C command-line switch. Note that this is not a boolean variable--
setting this to "1" is not the right way to "enable Unicode" (whatever that would mean).
You can use "0" to "disable Unicode", though (or alternatively unset PERL_UNICODE in your
shell before starting Perl). See the description of the "-C" switch for more informa-
tion.
SYS$LOGIN (specific to the VMS port)
Used if chdir has no argument and HOME and LOGDIR are not set.
Perl also has environment variables that control how Perl handles data specific to particular natural
languages. See perllocale.
Apart from these, Perl uses no other environment variables, except to make them available to the pro-
gram being executed, and to child processes. However, programs running setuid would do well to exe-
cute the following lines before doing anything else, just to keep people honest:
$ENV{PATH} = '/bin:/usr/bin'; # or whatever you need
$ENV{SHELL} = '/bin/sh' if exists $ENV{SHELL};
delete @ENV{qw(IFS CDPATH ENV BASH_ENV)};
perl v5.8.8 2006-01-07 PERLRUN(1)
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