Command Line Reference

The following is a list of the available switches which can be appended to the calling of perl from the
command line. The exact syntax for calling perl from the command line is as follows:

C:\Perl\bin\Perl.exe (switches) (--) (programfile) (arguments)

Switch Function
-0(octal) This sets the record separator ($/) by specifying the character's number
in the ASCII table in octal. For example, if we wanted to set our
separator to the character 'e' we would say perl -0101. The default
is the null character, and $/ is set to this if no argument is given. See
Appendix F for a complete ASCII table.
-a -a can be used in conjunction with -n or -p. It enables autosplit, and
uses whitespace as the default delimiter. Using -p will print out the
results, which are always stored in the array @F.
-C Enables native wide character system interfaces
-c This is a syntactic test only. It stops Perl executing, but reports on any
compilation errors that a program has before it exits. Any other switches
that have a runtime effect on your program will be ignored will -c is
enabled.
-d filename This switch invokes the Perl debugger. The Perl debugger will only run
once you have gotten your program to compile. Enabling -d allows you
to prompt debugging commands such as install breakpoints, and many
others.
Table continued on following page
Appendix E

Switch Function
-D(number) -D will set debugging flags, but only if you have debugging compiled
into your program. The following table shows you the arguments that
you may use for -D, and the resulting meaning of the switch.
-D(list)
Argument
(number)
Argument
(character)
Operation

1
p
Tokenizing and parsing

2
s
Stack snapshots

4
l
Label stack Processing

8
t
Trace execution

16
o
Object method lookup

32
c
String/numeric conversions

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 Command Line Reference

Switch Function
-D(list) (cont.) 64
p
Print preprocessor command for -p

128
m
Memory allocation

256
f
Format processing

512
r
Regular expression processing

1024
x
Syntax tree dump

2048
u
Tainting checks

4096
l
Memory leaks

8192
h
Hash dump
Table continued on following page

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Appendix E

Switch Function
-D(list) (cont.) 16384
X
Scratchpad allocations

32768
D
Cleaning up

-e This allows you to write one line of script – by instructing Perl to

execute text following the switch on the command line – without loading
and running a program file. Multiple calls may be made to -e in order
to build up scripts of more than one line.
-F/pattern/ Causes -a to split using the pattern specified between the delimiters.
The delimiters may be / /, " ", or ' '.
-h Prints out a list of all the command line switches.
-i(extension) Modifies the <> operator. Makes a backup file if an argument is given.
The argument is treated as the extension the saved file is to be given.
-I (directory) Causes a directory to be added to the search path when looking for files
to include. This path will be searched before the default paths, one of
which is the current directory, the other is generally
/usr/local/lib/Perl on Unix and C:\perl\bin on Windows.
-l(octal) -l adds line endings, and defines the line terminator by specifying the
character's number in the ASCII table in octal. If it is used with -n or -
p, it will chomp the line terminator. If the argument is omitted, then $\
is given the current value of $/. The default value of the special variable
$/ is newline.
-(mM)(-)module Causes the import of the given module for use by your script, before
executing the program.
-n Causes Perl to assume a while (<>) {My Script} loop around
your script. Basically it will iterate over the filename arguments. It does
no printing of lines.
-p This is the same as -n, except it will print lines.
-P -P causes your program to be run through the C preprocessor before it
is compiled. Bear in mind that the preprocessor directives begin with #,
the same as comments, so rather use ;# to comment your script when
you use the -P switch.

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 Command Line Reference

Switch Function
-s This defines variables with the same name as the switches that follow on
the command line. The other switches are also removed from @ARGV.
The newly defined variables are set to 1 by default. Some parsing of the
other switches is also enabled.
-S Causes perl to look for a given program file using the PATH
environment variable. In other words, it acts much like #!
-T Stops data entering a program from performing unsafe operations. It's a
good idea to use this when there is a lot of information exchange
occuring, like in CGI programming.
-u This will perform a core dump after compiling the program.
-U This forces Perl to allow unsafe operations.
-v Prints the version of Perl that is currently being used (includes VERY
IMPORTANT perl info).
-V(:variable) Prints out a summary of the main configuration values used by Perl
during compiling. It will also print out the value of the @INC array.
-w Invokes the rasiing of many useful warnings based on the (poor or bad)
syntax of the program being run.
This switch has been deprecated in perl 5.6, in favor of the use
warnings pragma.
-W Enables all warnings.
-x(directory) Tells Perl to get rid of extraneous text that precedes the shebang line.
All switches on the shebang line will still be enabled.
-X This will disable all warnings. We already know that we always use use
warnings when writing our programs. So you won't need this.

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