% perldoc perlretut
[download]

Note that PerlMonks has a copy of the Perl docs, but it is old and unmaintained, so I'd recommend that only as a last resort. Hm, I don't even see it anymore.

I tend to find that the best mirror, appropriate for the version of Perl that you have installed is via

   perldoc  <whatever>
[download]

/J\

I've long been a frequent searcher and reader of CPAN Search and Randy Kobes' Search.

Lately, though, I've been hanging out on AnnoCPAN, where you get not only a module's POD, but the opportunity to annotate the margin next to it, and of course to read others' comments. It's a great place to find tidbits you might not get from the docs themselves, as well as for module authors to incorporate these notes into the POD for future releases.

AnnoCPAN might be a great idea, however it doesn't appear to feed back any annotations to the module authors, indeed it has a big block at the top saying:

Is AnnCPAN a substitute for proper bug reports? No. If you want a bug to be fixed, or you would like a change in the official master copy of document, please follow the proper channels.

So don't rely on it getting back into the documentation of the module, and don't rely on it not becoming outdated when some bad module author goes and changes the whole documentation under its feet.

The best way to get a change to the documentation of any module I maintain is to send me a unified diff against the current version.

/J\

I added that disclaimer at some authors' suggestion. However,
• AnnoCPAN does send an email notification to authors whenever someone posts a note to their modules (it's opt-in after the first email).
• If an author changes the master documentation in response to a note, the note won't show up when viewing the documentation for the new version of the module (It usually guesses automatically when it shouldn't be shown, but when it doesn't guess right the note can be hidden manually. If I've missed one please let me know.)

If you hav an Active State install of Perl on a Windows machine then you can use file:///c:/Perl/html/index.html (with obvious changes as required for your install location).

Note that ppm updates the docs as you install modules. Refresh your browser after the install and the docs for the module are right there.

Activestate also has a good copy of the Perl documentation (including many modules) online.

See also http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/cgi-bin/docperl

Some outdated perl documentation is on this site too, although it's only the core pods, not those of the core modules. Go to the Library.

Should we keep the perlmonks perldocs up to date? As much as I mostly use perldoc from the command line, it's hard to point people to command line perldoc's in web posts/emails etc.

Ideally the system generating the html could insert appropriate anchors so that links could jump into deep parts of long perldocs.

Update: I see from randyk's comment that the core perldocs are accessible on search.cpan which I did not know. That means we can at least link to a cpan search for perlfaq for example using the perlmonks shortcut, or straight to perlfaq.pod with an embedded link.

I still suspect that a perlmonks local perldocs could be a good thing - especially if you could do stuff like list at the bottom all nodes that reference that perldoc.

search.cpan.org, as well as displaying module documentation via http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Net::FTP, also displays the core pod docs via http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?perlfaq. Similar links exist for http://cpan.uwinnipeg.ca/perldoc?Net::FTP and http://cpan.uwinnipeg.ca/perldoc?perlfaq.

If a terminal interface is more convenient, Pod-Perldocs can be used just like Pod-Perldoc, except if a requested doc isn't available locally, it will search for it on a remote server, and if available from there, grab and display it.

I'm a big fan of the perldoc.perl.org site. Fortunately, you can easily mirror it yourself: