POD2TEXT

Section: Perl Programmers Reference Guide (1)
Updated: 2010-10-12
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NAME

pod2text - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text

SYNOPSIS

pod2text [-aclost] [--code] [-i indent] [-q quotes] [-w width] [input [output ...]]

pod2text -h

DESCRIPTION

pod2text is a front-end for Pod::Text and its subclasses. It uses them to generate formatted ASCII text from POD source. It can optionally use either termcap sequences or ANSI color escape sequences to format the text.

input is the file to read for POD source (the POD can be embedded in code). If input isn't given, it defaults to STDIN. output, if given, is the file to which to write the formatted output. If output isn't given, the formatted output is written to STDOUT. Several POD files can be processed in the same pod2text invocation (saving module load and compile times) by providing multiple pairs of input and output files on the command line.

OPTIONS

-a, --alt: Use an alternate output format that, among other things, uses a different heading style and marks "=item" entries with a colon in the left margin.
--code: Include any non-POD text from the input file in the output as well. Useful for viewing code documented with POD blocks with the POD rendered and the code left intact.
-c, --color: Format the output with ANSI color escape sequences. Using this option requires that Term::ANSIColor be installed on your system.
-i indent, --indent=indent: Set the number of spaces to indent regular text, and the default indentation for "=over" blocks. Defaults to 4 spaces if this option isn't given.
-h, --help: Print out usage information and exit.
-l, --loose: Print a blank line after a "=head1" heading. Normally, no blank line is printed after "=head1", although one is still printed after "=head2", because this is the expected formatting for manual pages; if you're formatting arbitrary text documents, using this option is recommended.
-m width, --left-margin=width, --margin=width: The width of the left margin in spaces. Defaults to 0. This is the margin for all text, including headings, not the amount by which regular text is indented; for the latter, see -i option.
-o, --overstrike: Format the output with overstruck printing. Bold text is rendered as character, backspace, character. Italics and file names are rendered as underscore, backspace, character. Many pagers, such as less, know how to convert this to bold or underlined text.
-q quotes, --quotes=quotes: Sets the quote marks used to surround C<> text to quotes. If quotes is a single character, it is used as both the left and right quote; if quotes is two characters, the first character is used as the left quote and the second as the right quoted; and if quotes is four characters, the first two are used as the left quote and the second two as the right quote.
quotes may also be set to the special value "none", in which case no quote marks are added around C<> text.
-s, --sentence: Assume each sentence ends with two spaces and try to preserve that spacing. Without this option, all consecutive whitespace in non-verbatim paragraphs is compressed into a single space.
-t, --termcap: Try to determine the width of the screen and the bold and underline sequences for the terminal from termcap, and use that information in formatting the output. Output will be wrapped at two columns less than the width of your terminal device. Using this option requires that your system have a termcap file somewhere where Term::Cap can find it and requires that your system support termios. With this option, the output of pod2text will contain terminal control sequences for your current terminal type.
-w, --width=width, -width: The column at which to wrap text on the right-hand side. Defaults to 76, unless -t is given, in which case it's two columns less than the width of your terminal device.

DIAGNOSTICS

If pod2text fails with errors, see Pod::Text and Pod::Simple for information about what those errors might mean. Internally, it can also produce the following diagnostics:

-c (--color) requires Term::ANSIColor be installed: (F) -c or --color were given, but Term::ANSIColor could not be loaded.
Unknown option: %s: (F) An unknown command line option was given.

In addition, other Getopt::Long error messages may result from invalid command-line options.

ENVIRONMENT

COLUMNS: If -t is given, pod2text will take the current width of your screen from this environment variable, if available. It overrides terminal width information in TERMCAP.
TERMCAP: If -t is given, pod2text will use the contents of this environment variable if available to determine the correct formatting sequences for your current terminal device.

AUTHOR

Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.