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POD2TEXT(1)                       Perl Programmers Reference Guide                       POD2TEXT(1)



NAME
       pod2text - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text

SYNOPSIS
       pod2text [-aclostu] [--code] [--errors=style] [-i indent]
           [-q quotes] [--nourls] [--stderr] [-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.

       --errors=style
           Set the error handling style.  "die" says to throw an exception on any POD formatting
           error.  "stderr" says to report errors on standard error, but not to throw an exception.
           "pod" says to include a POD ERRORS section in the resulting documentation summarizing the
           errors.  "none" ignores POD errors entirely, as much as possible.

           The default is "die".

       -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.

       --nourls
           Normally, L<> formatting codes with a URL but anchor text are formatted to show both the
           anchor text and the URL.  In other words:

               L<foo|http://example.com/>

           is formatted as:

               foo <http://example.com/>

           This flag, if given, suppresses the URL when anchor text is given, so this example would
           be formatted as just "foo".  This can produce less cluttered output in cases where the
           URLs are not particularly important.

       -o, --overstrike
           Format the output with overstrike 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.  Otherwise, it is split in half,
           and the first half of the string is used as the left quote and the second is used 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.

       --stderr
           By default, pod2text dies if any errors are detected in the POD input.  If --stderr is
           given and no --errors flag is present, errors are sent to standard error, but pod2text
           does not abort.  This is equivalent to "--errors=stderr" and is supported for backward
           compatibility.

       -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.

       -u, --utf8
           By default, pod2text tries to use the same output encoding as its input encoding (to be
           backward-compatible with older versions).  This option says to instead force the output
           encoding to UTF-8.

           Be aware that, when using this option, the input encoding of your POD source should be
           properly declared unless it's US-ASCII.  Pod::Simple will attempt to guess the encoding
           and may be successful if it's Latin-1 or UTF-8, but it will warn, which by default
           results in a pod2text failure.  Use the "=encoding" command to declare the encoding.  See
           perlpod(1) for more information.

       -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.

EXIT STATUS
       As long as all documents processed result in some output, even if that output includes errata
       (a "POD ERRORS" section generated with "--errors=pod"), pod2text will exit with status 0.  If
       any of the documents being processed do not result in an output document, pod2text will exit
       with status 1.  If there are syntax errors in a POD document being processed and the error
       handling style is set to the default of "die", pod2text will abort immediately with exit
       status 255.

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 AT cpan.org>.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
       Copyright 1999-2001, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012-2019 Russ Allbery <rra AT cpan.org>

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

SEE ALSO
       Pod::Text, Pod::Text::Color, Pod::Text::Overstrike, Pod::Text::Termcap, Pod::Simple,
       perlpod(1)

       The current version of this script is always available from its web site at
       <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/podlators/>.  It is also part of the Perl core
       distribution as of 5.6.0.



perl v5.34.0                                 2025-07-25                                  POD2TEXT(1)