The structure of the Manual

The manual is divided into five parts. Take a look on the here-mentioned describtion to find the wanted information as fast as possible.

• About PEAR

  General information about installing and using PEAR. If you not know what PEAR is, this section is your starting point.

• Core components

  This section contains documentation about the PEAR classes providing the basics for the administration and using of PEAR. As a PEAR user, you should take a look on the docs of the PEAR base class and the PEAR_Error object.

  The here documented classes should be generally shipped with every regular PHP distribution.

• Packages

  This section covers the documentation for every regular PEAR Package. The most of them are probably not installed on your system by default. See the Installation chapter for an install how-to.

  A package reference page contains at least a documentation about the avaible public functions. Additional it contains a introduction section about general use of the class ('Introduction'), a section about constants provided by this package ('Constants'). Some references may contains a 'Example' part for bigger and/or more complex examples.

  The description of a function can contains this parts

  • Synopsis

    Shows the structure of the functions.

  • Description

    Gives a descriptions about the function does.

  • Parameter

    Describes the required and optional parameters

  • Returns

    Describes the returned value, if the function not fails.

  • Throws

    Describes the returned PEAR_Error objects, if the function fails

  • Note

    Additional informationen about the function.

  • See

    Links to other related functions or manual entries.

  • Example

    A small function related example.

• PECL Packages

  PECL Packages are regular PHP extensions written in C. The documentation structure should follow the Package section above.

• Contributing to PEAR

  Contains information for writing own PEAR Packages.