# phpman > perldoc > pod2man

## NAME
    pod2man - Convert POD data to formatted *roff input

## SYNOPSIS
    pod2man [--center=*string*] [--date=*string*] [--errors=*style*] [--fixed=*font*]
    [--fixedbold=*font*] [--fixeditalic=*font*] [--fixedbolditalic=*font*] [--name=*name*]
    [--nourls] [--official] [--release=*version*] [--section=*manext*] [--quotes=*quotes*]
    [--lquote=*quote*] [--rquote=*quote*] [--stderr] [--utf8] [--verbose] [*input* [*output*] ...]

    pod2man --help

## DESCRIPTION
    pod2man is a front-end for [Pod::Man](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AMan/markdown), using it to generate *roff input from POD source. The
    resulting *roff code is suitable for display on a terminal using [nroff(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/nroff/1/markdown), normally via [man(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/man/1/markdown),
    or printing using [troff(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/troff/1/markdown).

    *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 pod2man invocation (saving module load and compile times) by
    providing multiple pairs of *input* and *output* files on the command line.

    --section, --release, --center, --date, and --official can be used to set the headers and
    footers to use; if not given, [Pod::Man](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AMan/markdown) will assume various defaults. See below or [Pod::Man](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AMan/markdown) for
    details.

    pod2man assumes that your *roff formatters have a fixed-width font named "CW". If yours is
    called something else (like "CR"), use --fixed to specify it. This generally only matters for
    troff output for printing. Similarly, you can set the fonts used for bold, italic, and bold
    italic fixed-width output.

    Besides the obvious pod conversions, [Pod::Man](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AMan/markdown), and therefore pod2man also takes care of
    formatting func(), [func(n)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/func/n/markdown), and simple variable references like $foo or @bar so you don't have
    to use code escapes for them; complex expressions like $fred{'stuff'} will still need to be
    escaped, though. It also translates dashes that aren't used as hyphens into en dashes, makes
    long dashes--like this--into proper em dashes, fixes "paired quotes," and takes care of several
    other troff-specific tweaks. See [Pod::Man](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AMan/markdown) for complete information.

## OPTIONS
    -c *string*, --center=*string*
        Sets the centered page header for the ".TH" macro to *string*. The default is "User
        Contributed Perl Documentation", but also see --official below.

    -d *string*, --date=*string*
        Set the left-hand footer string for the ".TH" macro to *string*. By default, the
        modification date of the input file will be used, or the current date if input comes from
        "STDIN", and will be based on UTC (so that the output will be reproducible regardless of
        local time zone).

    --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".

    --fixed=*font*
        The fixed-width font to use for verbatim text and code. Defaults to "CW". Some systems may
        want "CR" instead. Only matters for [troff(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/troff/1/markdown) output.

    --fixedbold=*font*
        Bold version of the fixed-width font. Defaults to "CB". Only matters for [troff(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/troff/1/markdown) output.

    --fixeditalic=*font*
        Italic version of the fixed-width font (actually, something of a misnomer, since most
        fixed-width fonts only have an oblique version, not an italic version). Defaults to "CI".
        Only matters for [troff(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/troff/1/markdown) output.

    --fixedbolditalic=*font*
        Bold italic (probably actually oblique) version of the fixed-width font. [Pod::Man](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AMan/markdown) doesn't
        assume you have this, and defaults to "CB". Some systems (such as Solaris) have this font
        available as "CX". Only matters for [troff(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/troff/1/markdown) output.

### -h, --help
        Print out usage information.

### -l, --lax
        No longer used. pod2man used to check its input for validity as a manual page, but this
        should now be done by [podchecker(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/podchecker/1/markdown) instead. Accepted for backward compatibility; this
        option no longer does anything.

    --lquote=*quote*
    --rquote=*quote*
        Sets the quote marks used to surround C<> text. --lquote sets the left quote mark and
        --rquote sets the right quote mark. Either may also be set to the special value "none", in
        which case no quote mark is added on that side of C<> text (but the font is still changed
        for troff output).

        Also see the --quotes option, which can be used to set both quotes at once. If both --quotes
        and one of the other options is set, --lquote or --rquote overrides --quotes.

    -n *name*, --name=*name*
        Set the name of the manual page for the ".TH" macro to *name*. Without this option, the
        manual name is set to the uppercased base name of the file being converted unless the manual
        section is 3, in which case the path is parsed to see if it is a Perl module path. If it is,
        a path like ".../lib/Pod/Man.pm" is converted into a name like "[Pod::Man](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AMan/markdown)". This option, if
        given, overrides any automatic determination of the name.

        Although one does not have to follow this convention, be aware that the convention for UNIX
        man pages for commands is for the man page title to be in all-uppercase, even if the command
        isn't.

        This option is probably not useful when converting multiple POD files at once.

        When converting POD source from standard input, the name will be set to "STDIN" if this
        option is not provided. Providing this option is strongly recommended to set a meaningful
        manual page name.

### --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, --official
        Set the default header to indicate that this page is part of the standard Perl release, if
        --center is not also given.

    -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 (but the font is still changed for troff output).

        Also see the --lquote and --rquote options, which can be used to set the left and right
        quotes independently. If both --quotes and one of the other options is set, --lquote or
        --rquote overrides --quotes.

    -r *version*, --release=*version*
        Set the centered footer for the ".TH" macro to *version*. By default, this is set to the
        version of Perl you run pod2man under. Setting this to the empty string will cause some
        *roff implementations to use the system default value.

        Note that some system "an" macro sets assume that the centered footer will be a modification
        date and will prepend something like "Last modified: ". If this is the case for your target
        system, you may want to set --release to the last modified date and --date to the version
        number.

    -s *string*, --section=*string*
        Set the section for the ".TH" macro. The standard section numbering convention is to use 1
        for user commands, 2 for system calls, 3 for functions, 4 for devices, 5 for file formats, 6
        for games, 7 for miscellaneous information, and 8 for administrator commands. There is a lot
        of variation here, however; some systems (like Solaris) use 4 for file formats, 5 for
        miscellaneous information, and 7 for devices. Still others use 1m instead of 8, or some mix
        of both. About the only section numbers that are reliably consistent are 1, 2, and 3.

        By default, section 1 will be used unless the file ends in ".pm", in which case section 3
        will be selected.

### --stderr
        By default, pod2man 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 pod2man does not
        abort. This is equivalent to "--errors=stderr" and is supported for backward compatibility.

### -u, --utf8
        By default, pod2man produces the most conservative possible *roff output to try to ensure
        that it will work with as many different *roff implementations as possible. Many *roff
        implementations cannot handle non-ASCII characters, so this means all non-ASCII characters
        are converted either to a *roff escape sequence that tries to create a properly accented
        character (at least for troff output) or to "X".

        This option says to instead output literal UTF-8 characters. If your *roff implementation
        can handle it, this is the best output format to use and avoids corruption of documents
        containing non-ASCII characters. However, be warned that *roff source with literal UTF-8
        characters is not supported by many implementations and may even result in segfaults and
        other bad behavior.

        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](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3ASimple/markdown) 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
        pod2man failure. Use the "=encoding" command to declare the encoding. See [perlpod(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/perlpod/1/markdown) for
        more information.

### -v, --verbose
        Print out the name of each output file as it is being generated.

## 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"), pod2man will exit with status 0. If any of
    the documents being processed do not result in an output document, pod2man 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", pod2man will abort immediately with exit status 255.

## DIAGNOSTICS
    If pod2man fails with errors, see [Pod::Man](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AMan/markdown) and [Pod::Simple](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3ASimple/markdown) for information about what those
    errors might mean.

## EXAMPLES
        pod2man program > program.1
        pod2man SomeModule.pm /usr/perl/man/man3/SomeModule.3
        pod2man --section=7 note.pod > note.7

    If you would like to print out a lot of man page continuously, you probably want to set the C
    and D registers to set contiguous page numbering and even/odd paging, at least on some versions
    of [man(7)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/man/7/markdown).

        troff -man -rC1 -rD1 perl.1 perldata.1 perlsyn.1 ...

    To get index entries on "STDERR", turn on the F register, as in:

        troff -man -rF1 perl.1

    The indexing merely outputs messages via ".tm" for each major page, section, subsection, item,
    and any "X<>" directives. See [Pod::Man](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AMan/markdown) for more details.

## BUGS
    Lots of this documentation is duplicated from [Pod::Man](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AMan/markdown).

## AUTHOR
    Russ Allbery <<rra@cpan.org>>, based *very* heavily on the original pod2man by Larry Wall and Tom
    Christiansen.

## COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
    Copyright 1999-2001, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012-2019 Russ Allbery <<rra@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::Man](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AMan/markdown), [Pod::Simple](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3ASimple/markdown), [man(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/man/1/markdown), [nroff(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/nroff/1/markdown), [perlpod(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/perlpod/1/markdown), [podchecker(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/podchecker/1/markdown), [perlpodstyle(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/perlpodstyle/1/markdown), [troff(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/troff/1/markdown),
### man

    The man page documenting the an macro set may be [man(5)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/man/5/markdown) instead of [man(7)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/man/7/markdown) on your system.

    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.