CONTENTS

• NAME
• SYNOPSIS
• DESCRIPTION
  • $conf = myconfig ()
  • $conf = plv2hash ($text [, ...])
  • $info = summary ([$conf])
  • $md5 = signature ([$conf])
  • The hash structure
• REASONING
• BUGS
• TODO
• AUTHOR
• COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

#NAME

Config::Perl::V - Structured data retrieval of perl -V output

#SYNOPSIS

use Config::Perl::V;

my $local_config = Config::Perl::V::myconfig ();
print $local_config->{config}{osname};

#DESCRIPTION

#$conf = myconfig ()

This function will collect the data described in "The hash structure" below, and return that as a hash reference. It optionally accepts an option to include more entries from %ENV. See "environment" below.

Note that this will not work on uninstalled perls when called with -I/path/to/uninstalled/perl/lib, but it works when that path is in $PERL5LIB or in $PERL5OPT, as paths passed using -I are not known when the -V information is collected.

#$conf = plv2hash ($text [, ...])

Convert a sole 'perl -V' text block, or list of lines, to a complete myconfig hash. All unknown entries are defaulted.

#$info = summary ([$conf])

Return an arbitrary selection of the information. If no $conf is given, myconfig () is used instead.

#$md5 = signature ([$conf])

Return the MD5 of the info returned by summary () without the config_args entry.

If Digest::MD5 is not available, it return a string with only 0's.

#The hash structure

The returned hash consists of 4 parts:

#build

This information is extracted from the second block that is emitted by perl -V, and usually looks something like

 Characteristics of this binary (from libperl):
   Compile-time options: DEBUGGING USE_64_BIT_INT USE_LARGE_FILES
   Locally applied patches:
	 defined-or
	 MAINT24637
   Built under linux
   Compiled at Jun 13 2005 10:44:20
   @INC:
     /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.7/i686-linux-64int
     /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.7
     /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7/i686-linux-64int
     /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
     /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl
     .

or

 Characteristics of this binary (from libperl):
   Compile-time options: DEBUGGING MULTIPLICITY
			 PERL_DONT_CREATE_GVSV PERL_IMPLICIT_CONTEXT
			 PERL_MALLOC_WRAP PERL_TRACK_MEMPOOL
			 PERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV USE_ITHREADS
			 USE_LARGE_FILES USE_PERLIO
			 USE_REENTRANT_API
   Built under linux
   Compiled at Jan 28 2009 15:26:59

This information is not available anywhere else, including %Config, but it is the information that is only known to the perl binary.

The extracted information is stored in 5 entries in the build hash:

#osname

This is most likely the same as $Config{osname}, and was the name known when perl was built. It might be different if perl was cross-compiled.

The default for this field, if it cannot be extracted, is to copy $Config{osname}. The two may be differing in casing (OpenBSD vs openbsd).

#stamp

This is the time string for which the perl binary was compiled. The default value is 0.

#options

This is a hash with all the known defines as keys. The value is either 0, which means unknown or unset, or 1, which means defined.

#derived

As some variables are reported by a different name in the output of perl -V than their actual name in %Config, I decided to leave the config entry as close to reality as possible, and put in the entries that might have been guessed by the printed output in a separate block.

#patches

This is a list of optionally locally applied patches. Default is an empty list.

#environment

By default this hash is only filled with the environment variables out of %ENV that start with PERL, but you can pass the env option to myconfig to get more

my $conf = Config::Perl::V::myconfig ({ env => qr/^ORACLE/ });
my $conf = Config::Perl::V::myconfig ([ env => qr/^ORACLE/ ]);