POD2MAN(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide POD2MAN(1) #

POD2MAN(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide POD2MAN(1)

NNAAMMEE #

 pod2man - Convert POD data to formatted *roff input

SSYYNNOOPPSSIISS #

 pod2man [----cceenntteerr=_s_t_r_i_n_g] [----ddaattee=_s_t_r_i_n_g] [----eerrrroorrss=_s_t_y_l_e]
     [----ffiixxeedd=_f_o_n_t] [----ffiixxeeddbboolldd=_f_o_n_t] [----ffiixxeeddiittaalliicc=_f_o_n_t]
     [----ffiixxeeddbboollddiittaalliicc=_f_o_n_t] [----nnaammee=_n_a_m_e] [----nnoouurrllss]
     [----ooffffiicciiaall] [----rreelleeaassee=_v_e_r_s_i_o_n] [----sseeccttiioonn=_m_a_n_e_x_t]
     [----qquuootteess=_q_u_o_t_e_s] [----llqquuoottee=_q_u_o_t_e] [----rrqquuoottee=_q_u_o_t_e]
     [----ssttddeerrrr] [----nnoo--uuttff88] [----vveerrbboossee] [_i_n_p_u_t [_o_u_t_p_u_t] ...]

 pod2man ----hheellpp

DDEESSCCRRIIPPTTIIOONN #

 ppoodd22mmaann is a front-end for Pod::Man, using it to generate *roff input
 from POD source.  The resulting *roff code is suitable for display on a
 terminal using nnrrooffff(1), normally via mmaann(1), or printing using ttrrooffff(1).

 _i_n_p_u_t is the file to read for POD source (the POD can be embedded in
 code).  If _i_n_p_u_t isn't given, it defaults to "STDIN".  _o_u_t_p_u_t, if given,
 is the file to which to write the formatted output.  If _o_u_t_p_u_t isn't
 given, the formatted output is written to "STDOUT".  Several POD files
 can be processed in the same ppoodd22mmaann invocation (saving module load and
 compile times) by providing multiple pairs of _i_n_p_u_t and _o_u_t_p_u_t files on
 the command line.

 ----sseeccttiioonn, ----rreelleeaassee, ----cceenntteerr, ----ddaattee, and ----ooffffiicciiaall can be used to set
 the headers and footers to use; if not given, Pod::Man will assume
 various defaults.  See below or Pod::Man for details.

 ppoodd22mmaann assumes that your *roff formatters have a fixed-width font named
 "CW".  If yours is called something else (like "CR"), use ----ffiixxeedd 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, and therefore pod2man also
 takes care of formatting ffuunncc(()), func(n), 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 for complete information.

OOPPTTIIOONNSS #

 --cc _s_t_r_i_n_g, ----cceenntteerr=_s_t_r_i_n_g
     Sets the centered page header for the ".TH" macro to _s_t_r_i_n_g.  The
     default is "User Contributed Perl Documentation", but also see
     ----ooffffiicciiaall below.

 --dd _s_t_r_i_n_g, ----ddaattee=_s_t_r_i_n_g
     Set the left-hand footer string for the ".TH" macro to _s_t_r_i_n_g.  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).

 ----eerrrroorrss=_s_t_y_l_e
     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".

 ----ffiixxeedd=_f_o_n_t
     The fixed-width font to use for verbatim text and code.  Defaults to
     "CW".  Some systems may want "CR" instead.  Only matters for ttrrooffff(1)
     output.

 ----ffiixxeeddbboolldd=_f_o_n_t
     Bold version of the fixed-width font.  Defaults to "CB".  Only
     matters for ttrrooffff(1) output.

 ----ffiixxeeddiittaalliicc=_f_o_n_t
     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 ttrrooffff(1)
     output.

 ----ffiixxeeddbboollddiittaalliicc=_f_o_n_t
     Bold italic (probably actually oblique) version of the fixed-width
     font.  Pod::Man doesn't assume you have this, and defaults to "CB".
     Some systems (such as Solaris) have this font available as "CX".
     Only matters for ttrrooffff(1) output.

 --hh, ----hheellpp
     Print out usage information.

 --ll, ----llaaxx
     No longer used.  ppoodd22mmaann used to check its input for validity as a
     manual page, but this should now be done by ppooddcchheecckkeerr(1) instead.
     Accepted for backward compatibility; this option no longer does
     anything.

 ----llqquuoottee=_q_u_o_t_e
 ----rrqquuoottee=_q_u_o_t_e
     Sets the quote marks used to surround C<> text.  ----llqquuoottee sets the
     left quote mark and ----rrqquuoottee 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 ----qquuootteess option, which can be used to set both quotes at
     once.  If both ----qquuootteess and one of the other options is set, ----llqquuoottee
     or ----rrqquuoottee overrides ----qquuootteess.

 --nn _n_a_m_e, ----nnaammee=_n_a_m_e
     Set the name of the manual page for the ".TH" macro to _n_a_m_e.  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".  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.

 ----nnoouurrllss
     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.

 --oo, ----ooffffiicciiaall
     Set the default header to indicate that this page is part of the
     standard Perl release, if ----cceenntteerr is not also given.

 --qq _q_u_o_t_e_s, ----qquuootteess=_q_u_o_t_e_s
     Sets the quote marks used to surround C<> text to _q_u_o_t_e_s.  If _q_u_o_t_e_s
     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.

     _q_u_o_t_e_s 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 ----llqquuoottee and ----rrqquuoottee options, which can be used to set
     the left and right quotes independently.  If both ----qquuootteess and one of
     the other options is set, ----llqquuoottee or ----rrqquuoottee overrides ----qquuootteess.

 --rr _v_e_r_s_i_o_n, ----rreelleeaassee=_v_e_r_s_i_o_n
     Set the centered footer for the ".TH" macro to _v_e_r_s_i_o_n.  By default,
     this is set to the version of Perl you run ppoodd22mmaann 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 ----rreelleeaassee to the last modified date and ----ddaattee to the
     version number.

 --ss _s_t_r_i_n_g, ----sseeccttiioonn=_s_t_r_i_n_g
     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.

 ----ssttddeerrrr
     By default, ppoodd22mmaann dies if any errors are detected in the POD input.
     If ----ssttddeerrrr is given and no ----eerrrroorrss flag is present, errors are sent
     to standard error, but ppoodd22mmaann does not abort.  This is equivalent to
     "--errors=stderr" and is supported for backward compatibility.

 --uu, ----uuttff88
     This option allows ppoodd22mmaann to output literal UTF-8 characters.  On
     OpenBSD, it is enabled by default and can be disabled with ----nnoo--uuttff88,
     in which case non-ASCII characters are converted either to *roff
     escape sequences or to "X".

     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
     ppoodd22mmaann failure.  Use the "=encoding" command to declare the
     encoding.  See ppeerrllppoodd(1) for more information.

 --vv, ----vveerrbboossee
     Print out the name of each output file as it is being generated.

EEXXIITT SSTTAATTUUSS #

 As long as all documents processed result in some output, even if that
 output includes errata (a "POD ERRORS" section generated with
 "--errors=pod"), ppoodd22mmaann will exit with status 0.  If any of the
 documents being processed do not result in an output document, ppoodd22mmaann
 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", ppoodd22mmaann will abort immediately with exit status 255.

DDIIAAGGNNOOSSTTIICCSS #

 If ppoodd22mmaann fails with errors, see Pod::Man and Pod::Simple for
 information about what those errors might mean.

EEXXAAMMPPLLEESS #

     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 mmaann(7).

     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 for
 more details.

BBUUGGSS #

 Lots of this documentation is duplicated from Pod::Man.

AAUUTTHHOORR #

 Russ Allbery <rra@cpan.org>, based _v_e_r_y heavily on the original ppoodd22mmaann
 by Larry Wall and Tom Christiansen.

CCOOPPYYRRIIGGHHTT AANNDD LLIICCEENNSSEE #

 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.

SSEEEE AALLSSOO #

 Pod::Man, Pod::Simple, mmaann(1), nnrrooffff(1), ppeerrllppoodd(1), ppooddcchheecckkeerr(1),
 ppeerrllppooddssttyyllee(1), ttrrooffff(1), mmaann(7)

 The man page documenting the an macro set may be mmaann(5) instead of mmaann(7)
 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.

perl v5.36.3 2024-03-20 POD2MAN(1)