PERLRUN(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLRUN(1)
NAME
perlrun - how to execute the Perl interpreter
SYNOPSIS
perl [ -sTuU ] [ -hv ] [ -V[:configvar] ]
[ -cw ] [ -d[:debugger] ] [ -D[number/list] ]
[ -pna ] [ -Fpattern ] [ -l[octal] ] [ -0[octal] ]
[ -Idir ] [ -m[-]module ] [ -M[-]'module...' ]
[ -P ] [ -S ] [ -x[dir] ]
[ -i[extension] ]
[ -e 'command' ] [ -- ] [ programfile ] [ argument ]...
DESCRIPTION
Upon startup, Perl looks for your script 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 the
section on 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 script you must explicitly
specify a "-" for the script 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 script embedded in a larger
message. (In this case you would indicate the end of the
script 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 script.
Because many operating systems silently chop 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 script. And a partial -I
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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 /usr/bin/perl -wS $0 ${1+"$@"}'
if $running_under_some_shell;
to let Perl see the -p switch.
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 script, Perl compiles the entire
script to an internal form. If there are any compilation
errors, execution of the script is not attempted. (This
is unlike the typical shell script, which might run part-
way through before finding a syntax error.)
If the script is syntactically correct, it is executed.
If the script runs off the end without hitting an exit()
or die() operator, an implicit exit(0) is provided to
indicate successful completion.
#! 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 script, and codify it
in ALTERNATIVE_SHEBANG (see the dosish.h file in the
source distribution for more information).
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Win95/NT
The Win95/NT installation, when using the Activeware
port of Perl, will modify the Registry to associate
the .pl extension with the perl interpreter. If you
install another port of Perl, including the one in the
Win32 directory of the Perl distribution, then you'll
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
Macintosh perl scripts will have the appropriate
Creator and Type, so that double-clicking them will
invoke the perl application.
VMS Put
$ perl -mysw 'f$env("procedure")' 'p1' 'p2' 'p3' 'p4' 'p5' 'p6' 'p7' 'p8' !
$ exit++ + ++$status != 0 and $exit = $status = undef;
at the top of your script, where -mysw are any command
line switches you want to pass to Perl. You can now
invoke the script directly, by saying perl script, or
as a DCL procedure, by saying @script (or implicitly
via DCL$PATH by just using the name of the script).
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 Plan9
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)
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# 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 was 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, such as perldoc,
into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or
in another obvious and convenient place.
In this documentation, #!/usr/bin/perl on the first line
of the script will stand in for whatever method works on
your system.
Switches
A single-character switch may be combined with the
following switch, if any.
#!/usr/bin/perl -spi.bak # same as -s -p -i.bak
Switches include:
-0[digits]
specifies the input record separator ($/) as an octal
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:
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find . -name '*.bak' -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 character
with that value.
-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 causes Perl to check the syntax of the script and
then exit without executing it. Actually, it will
execute BEGIN, END, and use blocks, because these are
considered as occurring outside the execution of your
program.
-d runs the script under the Perl debugger. See the
perldebug manpage.
-d:foo
runs the script under the control of a debugging or
tracing module installed as Devel::foo. E.g.,
-d:DProf executes the script using the Devel::DProf
profiler. See the perldebug manpage.
-Dletters
-Dnumber
sets debugging flags. To watch how it executes your
script, 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. As an
alternative, specify a number instead of list of
letters (e.g., -D14 is equivalent to -Dtls):
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1 p Tokenizing and parsing
2 s Stack snapshots
4 l Context (loop) stack processing
8 t Trace execution
16 o Method and overloading resolution
32 c String/numeric conversions
64 P Print preprocessor command for -P
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 L Memory leaks (needs C<-DLEAKTEST> when compiling Perl)
8192 H Hash dump -- usurps values()
16384 X Scratchpad allocation
32768 D Cleaning up
65536 S Thread synchronization
All these flags require -DDEBUGGING when you compile
the Perl executable. This flag is automatically set
if you include -g option when Configure asks you
about optimizer/debugger flags.
-e commandline
may be used to enter one line of script. If -e is
given, Perl will not look for a script 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.
-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.
-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 *
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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'bak_*' -e 's/bar/baz/' fileA # backup to 'bak_fileA'
Or even to place backup copies of the original files
into another directory (provided the directory
already exists):
$ perl -pi'old/*.bak' -e 's/bar/baz/' fileA # backup to 'old/fileA.bak'
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'.bak' -e 's/bar/baz/' fileA # backup to 'fileA.bak'
$ perl -pi'*.bak' -e 's/bar/baz/' fileA # backup to 'fileA.bak'
From the shell, saying
$ perl -p -i.bak -e "s/foo/bar/; ... "
is the same as using the script:
#!/usr/bin/perl -pi.bak
s/foo/bar/;
which is equivalent to
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#!/usr/bin/perl
$extension = '.bak';
while (<>) {
if ($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'.bak' -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
the eof entry in the perlfunc manpage).
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 the section on Why does Perl
let me delete read-only files? Why does -i clobber
protected files? Isn't this a bug in Perl? in the
perlfaq5 manpage.
You cannot use -i to create directories or to strip
extensions from files.
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Perl does not expand ~, so don't do that.
Finally, note that 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 processing
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
effects: first, it automatically chomps "$/" (the
input record separator) when used with -n or -p, and
second, it assigns "$\" (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 script.
-Mmodule executes use module ; before executing your
script. You can use quotes to add extra code after
the module name, e.g., -M'module qw(foo bar)'.
If the first character after the -M or -m is a dash
(-) then the 'use' is replaced with 'no'.
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A little builtin syntactic sugar means you can also
say -mmodule=foo,bar or -Mmodule=foo,bar as a
shortcut for -M'module qw(foo bar)'. This avoids the
need to use quotes when importing symbols. 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.
-n causes Perl to assume the following loop around your
script, which makes it iterate over filename
arguments somewhat like sed -n or awk:
while (<>) {
... # your script 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 older
than 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.
BEGIN and END blocks may be used to capture control
before or after the implicit loop, just as in awk.
-p causes Perl to assume the following loop around your
script, which makes it iterate over filename
arguments somewhat like sed:
while (<>) {
... # your script goes here
} continue {
print or die "-p destination: $!\n";
}
If a file named by an argument cannot be opened for
some reason, Perl warns you about it, and moves on to
the next file. Note that the lines are printed
automatically. An error occurring during printing is
treated as fatal. To suppress printing use the -n
switch. A -p overrides a -n switch.
BEGIN and END blocks may be used to capture control
before or after the implicit loop, just as in awk.
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-P causes your script to be run through the C
preprocessor before compilation by Perl. (Because
both comments and cpp directives begin with the #
character, you should avoid starting comments with
any words recognized by the C preprocessor such as
"if", "else", or "define".)
-s enables some rudimentary switch parsing for switches
on the command line after the script name but before
any filename arguments (or before a --). Any switch
found there is removed from @ARGV and sets the
corresponding variable in the Perl script. The
following script prints "true" if and only if the
script is invoked with a -xyz switch.
#!/usr/bin/perl -s
if ($xyz) { print "true\n"; }
-S makes Perl use the PATH environment variable to
search for the script (unless the name of the script
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.
If the filename supplied contains directory
separators (i.e. it is an absolute or relative
pathname), and if the 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 script 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 script will be
searched for strictly on the PATH.
Typically this is used to emulate #! startup on
platforms that don't support #!. 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
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script to /bin/sh, which proceeds to try to execute
the Perl script 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 contain the full pathname,
so the -S tells Perl to search for the script if
necessary. After Perl locates the script, it parses
the lines and ignores them because the variable
$running_under_some_shell is never true. If the
script 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 /usr/bin/perl -wS $0 ${1+"$@"}'
& eval 'exec /usr/bin/perl -wS $0 $argv:q'
if $running_under_some_shell;
-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 run on another's
behalf, such as CGI programs. See the perlsec
manpage. Note that (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).
-u causes Perl to dump core after compiling your script.
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 script
before dumping, use the dump() operator instead.
Note: availability of undump is platform specific and
may not be available for a specific port of Perl. It
has been superseded by the new perl-to-C compiler,
which is more portable, even though it's still only
considered beta.
-U allows Perl to do unsafe operations. Currently the
only "unsafe" operations are the unlinking of
directories while running as superuser, and running
setuid programs with fatal taint checks turned into
warnings. Note that the -w switch (or the $^W
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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 value of @INC.
-V:name
Prints to STDOUT the value of the named configuration
variable.
-w prints warnings about variable names that are
mentioned only once, and scalar variables that are
used before being set. Also warns about redefined
subroutines, and references to undefined filehandles
or filehandles opened read-only that you are
attempting to write on. Also warns you if you use
values as a number that doesn'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.
You can disable specific warnings using __WARN__
hooks, as described in the perlvar manpage and the
warn entry in the perlfunc manpage. See also the
perldiag manpage and the perltrap manpage.
-x directory
tells Perl that the script is embedded in a 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 directory name is specified, Perl will
switch to that directory before running the script.
The -x switch controls only the disposal of leading
garbage. The script must be terminated with __END__
if there is trailing garbage to be ignored (the
script 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 script if -S is used.
PERL5LIB A colon-separated list of directories in which
to look for Perl library files before looking
in the standard library and the current
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directory. If PERL5LIB is not defined,
PERLLIB is used. When running taint checks
(because the script was running setuid or
setgid, or the -T switch was used), neither
variable is used. The script 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 -[DIMUdmw]
switches are allowed. When running taint
checks (because the script 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.
PERLLIB A colon-separated list of directories in which
to look for Perl library files before looking
in the standard 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' }
PERL5SHELL (specific to 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/c
on WindowsNT and command.com /c on Windows95.
The value is considered to be space delimited.
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
interfere with the proper functioning of other
programs (which usually look in COMSPEC to
find a shell fit for interactive use).
PERL_DEBUG_MSTATS
Relevant only if perl is compiled with the
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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.
Perl also has environment variables that control how Perl
handles data specific to particular natural languages.
See the perllocale manpage.
Apart from these, Perl uses no other environment
variables, except to make them available to the script
being executed, and to child processes. However, scripts
running setuid would do well to execute 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)};
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