  The study of the $\tau$-lepton decays into hadrons has contributed to a
better understanding of non-perturbative QCD and light-quark meson
spectroscopy, as well as to the search of new physics beyond the Standard
Model. The two- and three-meson decay modes, considering only those permitted
by the Standard Model, are the predominant decays and together with the
one-pion mode compose more than $85\%$ of the hadronic $\tau$-lepton decay
width. In this note we review the theoretical results for these modes
implemented in the Monte Carlo event generator TAUOLA and present at the same
time a comparison with the Belle Collaboration data for the two-pion decay mode
and the BaBar preliminary data for the three-pion decay mode as well for the
decay mode into two-kaon and one-pion.
