Ubuntu Manpage: pod2text - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text

NAME

       pod2text - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text

SYNOPSIS

       pod2text [-aclostu] [--code] [-e encoding]
           [--errors=style] [--guesswork=rule[,rule...]]
           [-i indent] [-q quotes]
           [--nourls] [--stderr] [-w width] [input [output ...]]

       pod2text -h

DESCRIPTION

       pod2text is a wrapper script around the Pod::Text and its subclasses.  It uses them to
       generate formatted 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.

       By default, the output encoding is the same as the encoding of the input file, or UTF-8 if
       that encoding is not set (except on EBCDIC systems).  See the -e option to explicitly set
       the output encoding and "Encoding" in Pod::Text for more discussion.

OPTIONS

Each option is annotated with the version of podlators in which that option was added with
its current meaning.

-a, --alt
[1.00] 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
[1.11] 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
[1.00] Format the output with ANSI color escape sequences. Using this option requires
that Term::ANSIColor be installed on your system.

-e encoding, --encoding=encoding
[5.00] Specifies the encoding of the output. encoding must be an encoding recognized
by the Encode module (see Encode::Supported). If the output contains characters that
cannot be represented in this encoding, that is an error that will be reported as
configured by the "errors" option. If error handling is other than "die", the
unrepresentable character will be replaced with the Encode substitution character
(normally "?").

WARNING: The input encoding of the POD source is independent from the output encoding,
and setting this option does not affect the interpretation of the POD input. Unless
your POD source is US-ASCII, its encoding should be declared with the "=encoding"
command in the source, as near to the top of the file as possible. If this is not
done, Pod::Simple will will attempt to guess the encoding and may be successful if
it's Latin-1 or UTF-8, but it will produce warnings. See perlpod(1) for more
information.

--errors=style
[2.5.0] 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".

--guesswork=rule[,rule...]
[5.01] By default, pod2text applies some default formatting rules based on guesswork
and regular expressions that are intended to make writing Perl documentation easier
and require less explicit markup. These rules may not always be appropriate,
particularly for documentation that isn't about Perl. This option allows turning all
or some of it off.

The special rule "all" enables all guesswork. This is also the default for backward
compatibility reasons. The special rule "none" disables all guesswork. Otherwise,
the value of this option should be a comma-separated list of one or more of the
following keywords:

quoting
If no guesswork is enabled, any text enclosed in C<> is surrounded by double
quotes in nroff (terminal) output unless the contents are already quoted. When
this guesswork is enabled, quote marks will also be suppressed for Perl variables,
function names, function calls, numbers, and hex constants.

Any unknown guesswork name is silently ignored (for potential future compatibility),
so be careful about spelling.

-i indent, --indent=indent
[1.00] 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
[1.00] Print out usage information and exit.

-l, --loose
[1.00] 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
[1.24] 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
[2.5.0] 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
[1.06] 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
[4.00] 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
[1.00] 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
[2.1.3] 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
[1.00] 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
[2.2.0] Set the output encoding to UTF-8. This is equivalent to "--encoding=UTF-8"
and is supported for backward compatibility.

-w, --width=width, -width
[1.00] 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@cpan.org>.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

       Copyright 1999-2001, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012-2019, 2022 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.