MAN page from RedHat Other perl-5.004-0.1.i386.rpm

PERLFAQ

Section: Perl Programmers Reference Guide (1)
Updated: perl 5.004, patch 04
Index

NAME

perlfaq - frequently asked questions about Perl ($Date: 1997/04/24 22:46:06 $)

DESCRIPTION

This document is structured into the following sections:

perlfaq: Structural overview of the FAQ.: This document.
the perlfaq1 manpage: General Questions About Perl: Very general, high-level information about Perl.
the perlfaq2 manpage: Obtaining and Learning about Perl: Where to find source and documentation to Perl, support and training,and related matters.
the perlfaq3 manpage: Programming Tools: Programmer tools and programming support.
the perlfaq4 manpage: Data Manipulation: Manipulating numbers, dates, strings, arrays, hashes, andmiscellaneous data issues.
the perlfaq5 manpage: Files and Formats: I/O and the ``f'' issues: filehandles, flushing, formats and footers.
the perlfaq6 manpage: Regexps: Pattern matching and regular expressions.
the perlfaq7 manpage: General Perl Language Issues: General Perl language issues that don't clearly fit into any of theother sections.
the perlfaq8 manpage: System Interaction: Interprocess communication (IPC), control over the user-interface(keyboard, screen and pointing devices).
the perlfaq9 manpage: Networking: Networking, the Internet, and a few on the web.

Where to get this document

This document is posted regularly to comp.lang.perl.announce andseveral other related newsgroups. It is available in a variety offormats from CPAN in the /CPAN/doc/FAQs/FAQ/ directory, or on the webat http://www.perl.com/perl/faq/ .

How to contribute to this document

You may mail corrections, additions, and suggestions toperlfaq-suggestionsAATTperl.com . Mail sent to the old perlfaq aliaswill merely cause the FAQ to be sent to you.

What will happen if you mail your Perl programming problems to the authors

Your questions will probably go unread, unless they're suggestions ofnew questions to add to the FAQ, in which case they should have goneto the perlfaq-suggestionsAATTperl.com instead.

You should have read section 2 of this faq. There you would havelearned that comp.lang.perl.misc is the appropriate place to go forfree advice. If your question is really important and you require aprompt and correct answer, you should hire a consultant.

Credits

When I first began the Perl FAQ in the late 80s, I never realized itwould have grown to over a hundred pages, nor that Perl would ever becomeso popular and widespread. This document could not have been writtenwithout the tremendous help provided by Larry Wall and the rest of thePerl Porters.

Author and Copyright Information

Noncommercial Reproduction

Permission is granted to distribute this document, in part or in full,via electronic means or printed copy providing that (1) that all creditsand copyright notices be retained, (2) that no charges beyond reproductionbe involved, and (3) that a reasonable attempt be made to use the mostcurrent version available.

Furthermore, you may include this document in any distribution of thefull Perl source or binaries, in its verbatim documentation, or on acomplete dump of the CPAN archive, providing that the three stipulationsgiven above continue to be met.

Commercial Reproduction

Requests for all other distribution rights, including the incorporationin part or in full of this text or its code into commercial productssuch as but not limited to books, magazine articles, or CD-ROMs, mustbe made to perlfaq-legalAATTperl.com. Any commercial use of any portionof this document without prior written authorization by its authorswill be subject to appropriate action.

Disclaimer

This information is offered in good faith and in the hope that it maybe of use, but is not guaranteed to be correct, up to date, or suitablefor any particular purpose whatsoever. The authors accept no liabilityin respect of this information or its use.

Changes

24/April/97

Style and whitespace changes from Chip, new question on reading onecharacter at a time from a terminal using POSIX from Tom.

23/April/97

Added http://www.oasis.leo.org/perl/ to the perlfaq2 manpage. Style fix tothe perlfaq3 manpage. Added floating point precision, fixed complex numberarithmetic, cross-references, caveat for Text::Wrap, alternativeanswer for initial capitalizing, fixed incorrect regexp, added exampleof Tie::IxHash to the perlfaq4 manpage. Added example of passing and storingfilehandles, added commify to the perlfaq5 manpage. Restored variable suicide,and added mass commenting to the perlfaq7 manpage. Added Net::Telnet, fixedbackticks, added reader/writer pair to telnet question, added FindBin,grouped module questions together in the perlfaq8 manpage. Expanded caveatsfor the simple URL extractor, gave LWP example, added CGI securityquestion, expanded on the email address answer in the perlfaq9 manpage.

25/March/97

Added more info to the binary distribution section of the perlfaq2 manpage.Added Net::Telnet to the perlfaq6 manpage. Fixed typos in the perlfaq8 manpage. Addedmail sending example to the perlfaq9 manpage. Added Merlyn's columns tothe perlfaq2 manpage.

18/March/97

Added the DATE to the NAME section, indicating which sections havechanged.

Mentioned SIGPIPE and the perlipc manpage in the forking open answer inthe perlfaq8 manpage.

Fixed description of a regular expression in the perlfaq4 manpage.

17/March/97 Version

Various typos fixed throughout.

Added new question on Perl BNF on the perlfaq7 manpage.

Initial Release: 11/March/97

This is the initial release of version 3 of the FAQ; consequently therehave been no changes since its initial release.

This document was created byman2html,using the manual pages.