pod2text(1) - perldoc - phpman

Che Dong

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>.

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.