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perl-reference

Perl-reference is a program to quickly display reference documentation for a Perl function, variable, regexp operator, or language keyword. This documentation is generated from the default Perl POD files, namely perlfunc, perlop, and perlvar. Unlike perldoc, perl-reference relies on documentation generated at compile-time, which results in a much higher response time.

It consists of two parts, mkperlreference and pf. 'mkperlreference' is run once during compile-time to create a cache of the Perl POD documentation. This cache consists of plain text files, one for each function, variable, regexp operator and language keyword in Perl. These files are usually installed in /usr/share/perl-reference. 'pf' displays the generated documentation by finding the right cached file and writing its contents to a pager or standard output.

Last updated 7 Jan, 2003