Zoidberg provides a modular Perl shell written, configured, and operated entirely
in Perl. It aspires to be a fully operational login shell with all the features
one normally expects. But it also gives direct access to Perl objects and data
structures from the command line, and allows you to run Perl code within the
scope of your commandline. Although Zoidberg does not do the language
interpreting itself (-- it uses perl to do this (-- it supplies powerful language
extensions aimed at creating an easy to use interface.
By default zoid runs an interactive commandline when both STDIN and STDOUT
are terminal devices, or reads from STDIN till End Of Line and execute each
line like it was entered interactively.
When an action is specified by one of the commandline options this will
suppress the default behavior and exit after executing that action.
If any file names are given, these will be interpreted as source scripts and
suppress default behavior.
Be aware that these source scripts are expected to be Perl scripts and are
NOT interpreted or executed the same way as normal input.
This document only describes the commandline script zoid, see zoiduser(1)
and zoidfaq(1) for help on using the zoidberg shell.
OPTIONS
"-e
Execute a string as interpreted by zoidberg. If non-interactive exits with
exit status of command string. Multiple commands may be given to build up
a multi-line script. Make sure to use semicolons where you would in a
normal multi-line script.
"-C,
Print a list of configuration variable of this installation and exit.
Most importantly this tells you where zoid will search for it's configuration
and data files.
"-c
Does the same as --exec but this is bound to change.
"-D,
Set either the global debug bit or set the debug bit for the given class.
Using the global variant makes zoid output a lot of debug information.
"-h,
"-u,
Print a help message and exits.
"-Idir[,dir,
The specified directories are added to the module search path
@INC.
"-i,
Start an interactive shell. This is the default if no other options are
supplied.
"-l,
Force login behavior, this will reset your current working directory.
This variable is also available to plugins and scripts, which might act on it.
"-mmodule"
"-Mmodule"
"-Mmodule=args[,arg,
Import module into the eval namespace.
With -m explicit import empty list, with -M default arguments or
specified arguments. Details like the equivalent perl option, see perlrun(1) .
"-o
"-o
"+o
Set (-o) or unset (+o) one or more settings.
"-s,
Read input from stdin. This is the default if no other options are supplied and
neither stdin or stdout are terminal devices.
"-V,
Display version information.
"-v,
Sets the shell in verbose mode. This will cause each command to be echoed to STDERR.
ENVIRONMENT
The variables $PWD, $HOME and $USER are set to default values if not yet set by
the parent process.
The variable $ZOID will point to the location of the zoid executable, it is similar
to $SHELL for POSIX compliant shells. zoid uses a different variable because
some programs seem to expect $SHELL to point to a POSIX compliant shell.
To switch off ansi colours on the terminal set $CLICOLOR to 0 (null).
FILES
Zoidberg uses rc files, data files and plugin files, use the --config switch
to check the search paths used.
Which rcfiles are loaded is controlled be the 'rcfiles' and 'norc' settings,
try "zoid -o norc" to skip all rcfiles or "zoid -o rcfiles=file1:file2:file3"
to use files other then the default.
The runtime search path for plugins etc. can be controlled with the 'data_dirs'
setting, try "zoid -o data_dirs=dir1:dir2:dir3".
DIAGNOSTICS
Error messages may be issued either by perl or by one any of the
modules in use. The zoid utility itself will only complain when the commandline
options are wrong. If the error was thrown by one of zoid's core modules, the error
message will either start with the module name or the name of the command that went wrong.
RESTRICTIONS
Source files and command input are NOT interpreted the same way.
Use -e _or_ -c, do not mix them.
BUGS
Known bugs are listed in the BUGS file, which is included in the source
package. Visit the web page to submit bug reports or mail the author.
Copyright (c) 2002 Jaap G Karssenberg and RL Zwart. All
rights reserved. This program is free software; you can
redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See either
the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License for
more details.
See <http://www.perl.com/language/misc/Artistic.html>
and <http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html>