Cannot run perldoc and install perl-doc!

fedorame has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi all,
I am a new monk here,and I've a confused problem. I wanna run perldoc ,but it told me :
You need to install the perl-doc package to use this program.

But in /usr/bin,the program is just in there.My system is Debian Etch,and the perl version is 5.8.8 . So I use 'apt-get install perl-doc',however ,it failed with this:

Some packages could not be installed.This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of incoming.

Since you onlu requested a single operation it is extremely likelu that the package is simply not installable and a bug report against that package should be filed.

the following information may help to resolve the situation:
perl-doc:Depends:perl (>=5.8.4.1)but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages

What should I do?I have to throw perldoc into junkbox? thanks for your reply!

Comment on Cannot run perldoc and install perl-doc!

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Cannot run perldoc and install perl-doc! by moritz (Cardinal) on Jul 20, 2007 at 12:26 UTC
This is a Debian (or Ubuntu?) problem, not a Perl problem. You should take care that perl is installed through the package manager, and that it is a bit more up to date than now. In Debian Stable perl Version 5.8.8-7 is standard, so your system is either rather old or broken. Probably you need to edit /etc/apt/source.list, then run `apt-get update` and then `apt-get install perl perl-doc` Perl 6 in German	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Cannot run perldoc and install perl-doc! by fedorame (Initiate) on Jul 20, 2007 at 15:31 UTC
Thanks buddy.I've changed the sources.list and it works!	[reply]
Re: Cannot run perldoc and install perl-doc! by spatterson (Pilgrim) on Jul 20, 2007 at 12:42 UTC
Alternatively, you can use man for most of the perldoc functionality though 'perldoc -f' & 'perldoc -q' don't quite work, use man perlfunc & man perlfaq instead just another cpan module author	[reply]