1POD2TEXT(1) User Contributed Perl Documentation POD2TEXT(1)
2
6 pod2text - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text
7
9 pod2text [-aclostu] [--code] [--errors=style] [-i indent]
10 [-q quotes] [--nourls] [--stderr] [-w width]
11 [input [output ...]]
12 pod2text -h
14
16 pod2text is a front-end for Pod::Text and its subclasses. It uses them
17 to generate formatted ASCII text from POD source. It can optionally
18 use either termcap sequences or ANSI color escape sequences to format
19 the text.
20 input is the file to read for POD source (the POD can be embedded in
22 code). If input isn't given, it defaults to "STDIN". output, if
23 given, is the file to which to write the formatted output. If output
24 isn't given, the formatted output is written to "STDOUT". Several POD
25 files can be processed in the same pod2text invocation (saving module
26 load and compile times) by providing multiple pairs of input and output
27 files on the command line.
28
30 -a, --alt
31 Use an alternate output format that, among other things, uses a
32 different heading style and marks "=item" entries with a colon in
33 the left margin.
34 --code
36 Include any non-POD text from the input file in the output as well.
37 Useful for viewing code documented with POD blocks with the POD
38 rendered and the code left intact.
39 -c, --color
41 Format the output with ANSI color escape sequences. Using this
42 option requires that Term::ANSIColor be installed on your system.
43 -i indent, --indent=indent
45 Set the number of spaces to indent regular text, and the default
46 indentation for "=over" blocks. Defaults to 4 spaces if this
47 option isn't given.
48 -errors=style
50 Set the error handling style. "die" says to throw an exception on
51 any POD formatting error. "stderr" says to report errors on
52 standard error, but not to throw an exception. "pod" says to
53 include a POD ERRORS section in the resulting documentation
54 summarizing the errors. "none" ignores POD errors entirely, as
55 much as possible.
56 The default is "die".
58 -h, --help
60 Print out usage information and exit.
61 -l, --loose
63 Print a blank line after a "=head1" heading. Normally, no blank
64 line is printed after "=head1", although one is still printed after
65 "=head2", because this is the expected formatting for manual pages;
66 if you're formatting arbitrary text documents, using this option is
67 recommended.
68 -m width, --left-margin=width, --margin=width
70 The width of the left margin in spaces. Defaults to 0. This is
71 the margin for all text, including headings, not the amount by
72 which regular text is indented; for the latter, see -i option.
73 --nourls
75 Normally, L<> formatting codes with a URL but anchor text are
76 formatted to show both the anchor text and the URL. In other
77 words:
78 L<foo|http://example.com/>
80 is formatted as:
82 foo <http://example.com/>
84 This flag, if given, suppresses the URL when anchor text is given,
86 so this example would be formatted as just "foo". This can produce
87 less cluttered output in cases where the URLs are not particularly
88 important.
89 -o, --overstrike
91 Format the output with overstrike printing. Bold text is rendered
92 as character, backspace, character. Italics and file names are
93 rendered as underscore, backspace, character. Many pagers, such as
94 less, know how to convert this to bold or underlined text.
95 -q quotes, --quotes=quotes
97 Sets the quote marks used to surround C<> text to quotes. If
98 quotes is a single character, it is used as both the left and right
99 quote; if quotes is two characters, the first character is used as
100 the left quote and the second as the right quoted; and if quotes is
101 four characters, the first two are used as the left quote and the
102 second two as the right quote.
103 quotes may also be set to the special value "none", in which case
105 no quote marks are added around C<> text.
106 -s, --sentence
108 Assume each sentence ends with two spaces and try to preserve that
109 spacing. Without this option, all consecutive whitespace in non-
110 verbatim paragraphs is compressed into a single space.
111 --stderr
113 By default, pod2text dies if any errors are detected in the POD
114 input. If --stderr is given and no --errors flag is present,
115 errors are sent to standard error, but pod2text does not abort.
116 This is equivalent to "--errors=stderr" and is supported for
117 backward compatibility.
118 -t, --termcap
120 Try to determine the width of the screen and the bold and underline
121 sequences for the terminal from termcap, and use that information
122 in formatting the output. Output will be wrapped at two columns
123 less than the width of your terminal device. Using this option
124 requires that your system have a termcap file somewhere where
125 Term::Cap can find it and requires that your system support
126 termios. With this option, the output of pod2text will contain
127 terminal control sequences for your current terminal type.
128 -u, --utf8
130 By default, pod2text tries to use the same output encoding as its
131 input encoding (to be backward-compatible with older versions).
132 This option says to instead force the output encoding to UTF-8.
133 Be aware that, when using this option, the input encoding of your
135 POD source must be properly declared unless it is US-ASCII or
136 Latin-1. POD input without an "=encoding" command will be assumed
137 to be in Latin-1, and if it's actually in UTF-8, the output will be
138 double-encoded. See perlpod(1) for more information on the
139 "=encoding" command.
140 -w, --width=width, -width
142 The column at which to wrap text on the right-hand side. Defaults
143 to 76, unless -t is given, in which case it's two columns less than
144 the width of your terminal device.
145
147 As long as all documents processed result in some output, even if that
148 output includes errata (a "POD ERRORS" section generated with
149 "--errors=pod"), pod2text will exit with status 0. If any of the
150 documents being processed do not result in an output document, pod2text
151 will exit with status 1. If there are syntax errors in a POD document
152 being processed and the error handling style is set to the default of
153 "die", pod2text will abort immediately with exit status 255.
154
156 If pod2text fails with errors, see Pod::Text and Pod::Simple for
157 information about what those errors might mean. Internally, it can
158 also produce the following diagnostics:
159 -c (--color) requires Term::ANSIColor be installed
161 (F) -c or --color were given, but Term::ANSIColor could not be
162 loaded.
163 Unknown option: %s
165 (F) An unknown command line option was given.
166 In addition, other Getopt::Long error messages may result from invalid
168 command-line options.
169
171 COLUMNS
172 If -t is given, pod2text will take the current width of your screen
173 from this environment variable, if available. It overrides
174 terminal width information in TERMCAP.
175 TERMCAP
177 If -t is given, pod2text will use the contents of this environment
178 variable if available to determine the correct formatting sequences
179 for your current terminal device.
180
182 Pod::Text, Pod::Text::Color, Pod::Text::Overstrike, Pod::Text::Termcap,
183 Pod::Simple, perlpod(1)
184 The current version of this script is always available from its web
186 site at <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/podlators/>. It is also
187 part of the Perl core distribution as of 5.6.0.
188
190 Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>.
191
193 Copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013 Russ
194 Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>.
195 This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it
197 under the same terms as Perl itself.
198perl v5.16.3 2013-01-02 POD2TEXT(1)