Perldoc versus Man

[Uri Guttman]

EW> Is there any content and usability difference between
EW> perldoc and man.

EW> I have only "man perl" at my Linux toolbox.
EW> However accessing information about function
EW> would not work as in perldoc.

EW> Like: man perl -f sbstr
EW> won't do

EW> Can I access the direct explanation
EW> of the particular function straight away from 'man'?
EW> Or I need to install perldoc instead?

for basic printing of a perl doc page they are equivilent. there can be
some minor differences in formatting depending on the man and paging
program (more, less) used.

but perldoc does know about various parts of the docs that man doesn't
and that is what those extra options do. -f prints the doc for a single
function out of perlfunc which has dozens of entries. this is much nicer
than a full man page of the funcs. -q will do a search of the FAQ and
return relevent entries, another thing man can't do. but some man
systems have keyword search stuff (built in like man -k or added on like
glimpse). and there are many man reader programs (i like tkman (if only
it were written in perl!)) which make life easier too.

and there is also perldoc.com which has the perldocs for
multiple versions (which is useful) in html and searchable.

uri

 

[Edward Wijaya]

Hi,

Is there any content and usability difference between
perldoc and man.

I have only "man perl" at my Linux toolbox.
However accessing information about function
would not work as in perldoc.

Like: man perl -f sbstr
won't do

Can I access the direct explanation
of the particular function straight away from 'man'?
Or I need to install perldoc instead?

Thanks so much for your time.

Regards
Edward WIJAYA
SINGAPORE

 

[Ala Qumsieh]

and there are many man reader programs (i like tkman (if only
it were written in perl!))

Shouldn't be too hard to duplicate using Tk. But, I seem to recall that
it has already been done. A quick search on CPAN comes up with Tk:od,
but that's not a standalone program.

--Ala

 

[James Willmore]

Shouldn't be too hard to duplicate using Tk. But, I seem to recall that
it has already been done. A quick search on CPAN comes up with Tk:od,
but that's not a standalone program.

Huh? tkpod works for me It's part of the Tk:od install.

It's not quite as functional as perldoc, but it's a pretty good tool.

--
Jim

Copyright notice: all code written by the author in this post is
released under the GPL. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt
for more information.

a fortune quote ...
"I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent."
-- Ashleigh Brilliant

 

[Uri Guttman]

JW> Huh? tkpod works for me It's part of the Tk:od install.

JW> It's not quite as functional as perldoc, but it's a pretty good tool.

well that only does pod (i assume). tkman uses a program called rosetta
to handle many man formats and texinfo. lots of features including
integration with glimpse, a full text search engine. i have to redo it
one day but i used to have it setup with glimpse. you could update the
index from the tool itself.

so a tcl/tk to perl/tk translator is needed.

uri