1POD2MAN(1) User Contributed Perl Documentation POD2MAN(1)
2
6 pod2man - Convert POD data to formatted *roff input
7
9 pod2man [--center=string] [--date=string] [--errors=style]
10 [--fixed=font] [--fixedbold=font] [--fixeditalic=font]
11 [--fixedbolditalic=font] [--name=name] [--nourls]
12 [--official] [--quotes=quotes] [--release[=version]]
13 [--section=manext] [--stderr] [--utf8] [--verbose]
14 [input [output] ...]
15 pod2man --help
17
19 pod2man is a front-end for Pod::Man, using it to generate *roff input
20 from POD source. The resulting *roff code is suitable for display on a
21 terminal using nroff(1), normally via man(1), or printing using
22 troff(1).
23 input is the file to read for POD source (the POD can be embedded in
25 code). If input isn't given, it defaults to "STDIN". output, if
26 given, is the file to which to write the formatted output. If output
27 isn't given, the formatted output is written to "STDOUT". Several POD
28 files can be processed in the same pod2man invocation (saving module
29 load and compile times) by providing multiple pairs of input and output
30 files on the command line.
31 --section, --release, --center, --date, and --official can be used to
33 set the headers and footers to use; if not given, Pod::Man will assume
34 various defaults. See below or Pod::Man for details.
35 pod2man assumes that your *roff formatters have a fixed-width font
37 named "CW". If yours is called something else (like "CR"), use --fixed
38 to specify it. This generally only matters for troff output for
39 printing. Similarly, you can set the fonts used for bold, italic, and
40 bold italic fixed-width output.
41 Besides the obvious pod conversions, Pod::Man, and therefore pod2man
43 also takes care of formatting func(), func(n), and simple variable
44 references like $foo or @bar so you don't have to use code escapes for
45 them; complex expressions like $fred{'stuff'} will still need to be
46 escaped, though. It also translates dashes that aren't used as hyphens
47 into en dashes, makes long dashes--like this--into proper em dashes,
48 fixes "paired quotes," and takes care of several other troff-specific
49 tweaks. See Pod::Man for complete information.
50
52 -c string, --center=string
53 Sets the centered page header to string. The default is "User
54 Contributed Perl Documentation", but also see --official below.
55 -d string, --date=string
57 Set the left-hand footer string to this value. By default, the
58 modification date of the input file will be used, or the current
59 date if input comes from "STDIN".
60 -errors=style
62 Set the error handling style. "die" says to throw an exception on
63 any POD formatting error. "stderr" says to report errors on
64 standard error, but not to throw an exception. "pod" says to
65 include a POD ERRORS section in the resulting documentation
66 summarizing the errors. "none" ignores POD errors entirely, as
67 much as possible.
68 The default is "die".
70 --fixed=font
72 The fixed-width font to use for verbatim text and code. Defaults
73 to "CW". Some systems may want "CR" instead. Only matters for
74 troff(1) output.
75 --fixedbold=font
77 Bold version of the fixed-width font. Defaults to "CB". Only
78 matters for troff(1) output.
79 --fixeditalic=font
81 Italic version of the fixed-width font (actually, something of a
82 misnomer, since most fixed-width fonts only have an oblique
83 version, not an italic version). Defaults to "CI". Only matters
84 for troff(1) output.
85 --fixedbolditalic=font
87 Bold italic (probably actually oblique) version of the fixed-width
88 font. Pod::Man doesn't assume you have this, and defaults to "CB".
89 Some systems (such as Solaris) have this font available as "CX".
90 Only matters for troff(1) output.
91 -h, --help
93 Print out usage information.
94 -l, --lax
96 No longer used. pod2man used to check its input for validity as a
97 manual page, but this should now be done by podchecker(1) instead.
98 Accepted for backward compatibility; this option no longer does
99 anything.
100 -n name, --name=name
102 Set the name of the manual page to name. Without this option, the
103 manual name is set to the uppercased base name of the file being
104 converted unless the manual section is 3, in which case the path is
105 parsed to see if it is a Perl module path. If it is, a path like
106 ".../lib/Pod/Man.pm" is converted into a name like "Pod::Man".
107 This option, if given, overrides any automatic determination of the
108 name.
109 Note that this option is probably not useful when converting
111 multiple POD files at once. The convention for Unix man pages for
112 commands is for the man page title to be in all-uppercase even if
113 the command isn't.
114 --nourls
116 Normally, L<> formatting codes with a URL but anchor text are
117 formatted to show both the anchor text and the URL. In other
118 words:
119 L<foo|http://example.com/>
121 is formatted as:
123 foo <http://example.com/>
125 This flag, if given, suppresses the URL when anchor text is given,
127 so this example would be formatted as just "foo". This can produce
128 less cluttered output in cases where the URLs are not particularly
129 important.
130 -o, --official
132 Set the default header to indicate that this page is part of the
133 standard Perl release, if --center is not also given.
134 -q quotes, --quotes=quotes
136 Sets the quote marks used to surround C<> text to quotes. If
137 quotes is a single character, it is used as both the left and right
138 quote; if quotes is two characters, the first character is used as
139 the left quote and the second as the right quoted; and if quotes is
140 four characters, the first two are used as the left quote and the
141 second two as the right quote.
142 quotes may also be set to the special value "none", in which case
144 no quote marks are added around C<> text (but the font is still
145 changed for troff output).
146 -r, --release
148 Set the centered footer. By default, this is the version of Perl
149 you run pod2man under. Note that some system an macro sets assume
150 that the centered footer will be a modification date and will
151 prepend something like "Last modified: "; if this is the case, you
152 may want to set --release to the last modified date and --date to
153 the version number.
154 -s, --section
156 Set the section for the ".TH" macro. The standard section
157 numbering convention is to use 1 for user commands, 2 for system
158 calls, 3 for functions, 4 for devices, 5 for file formats, 6 for
159 games, 7 for miscellaneous information, and 8 for administrator
160 commands. There is a lot of variation here, however; some systems
161 (like Solaris) use 4 for file formats, 5 for miscellaneous
162 information, and 7 for devices. Still others use 1m instead of 8,
163 or some mix of both. About the only section numbers that are
164 reliably consistent are 1, 2, and 3.
165 By default, section 1 will be used unless the file ends in ".pm",
167 in which case section 3 will be selected.
168 --stderr
170 By default, pod2man dies if any errors are detected in the POD
171 input. If --stderr is given and no --errors flag is present,
172 errors are sent to standard error, but pod2man does not abort.
173 This is equivalent to "--errors=stderr" and is supported for
174 backward compatibility.
175 -u, --utf8
177 By default, pod2man produces the most conservative possible *roff
178 output to try to ensure that it will work with as many different
179 *roff implementations as possible. Many *roff implementations
180 cannot handle non-ASCII characters, so this means all non-ASCII
181 characters are converted either to a *roff escape sequence that
182 tries to create a properly accented character (at least for troff
183 output) or to "X".
184 This option says to instead output literal UTF-8 characters. If
186 your *roff implementation can handle it, this is the best output
187 format to use and avoids corruption of documents containing non-
188 ASCII characters. However, be warned that *roff source with
189 literal UTF-8 characters is not supported by many implementations
190 and may even result in segfaults and other bad behavior.
191 Be aware that, when using this option, the input encoding of your
193 POD source must be properly declared unless it is US-ASCII or
194 Latin-1. POD input without an "=encoding" command will be assumed
195 to be in Latin-1, and if it's actually in UTF-8, the output will be
196 double-encoded. See perlpod(1) for more information on the
197 "=encoding" command.
198 -v, --verbose
200 Print out the name of each output file as it is being generated.
201
203 As long as all documents processed result in some output, even if that
204 output includes errata (a "POD ERRORS" section generated with
205 "--errors=pod"), pod2man will exit with status 0. If any of the
206 documents being processed do not result in an output document, pod2man
207 will exit with status 1. If there are syntax errors in a POD document
208 being processed and the error handling style is set to the default of
209 "die", pod2man will abort immediately with exit status 255.
210
212 If pod2man fails with errors, see Pod::Man and Pod::Simple for
213 information about what those errors might mean.
214
216 pod2man program > program.1
217 pod2man SomeModule.pm /usr/perl/man/man3/SomeModule.3
218 pod2man --section=7 note.pod > note.7
219 If you would like to print out a lot of man page continuously, you
221 probably want to set the C and D registers to set contiguous page
222 numbering and even/odd paging, at least on some versions of man(7).
223 troff -man -rC1 -rD1 perl.1 perldata.1 perlsyn.1 ...
225 To get index entries on "STDERR", turn on the F register, as in:
227 troff -man -rF1 perl.1
229 The indexing merely outputs messages via ".tm" for each major page,
231 section, subsection, item, and any "X<>" directives. See Pod::Man for
232 more details.
233
235 Lots of this documentation is duplicated from Pod::Man.
236
238 Pod::Man, Pod::Simple, man(1), nroff(1), perlpod(1), podchecker(1),
239 perlpodstyle(1), troff(1), man(7)
240 The man page documenting the an macro set may be man(5) instead of
242 man(7) on your system.
243 The current version of this script is always available from its web
245 site at <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/podlators/>. It is also
246 part of the Perl core distribution as of 5.6.0.
247
249 Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>, based very heavily on the original
250 pod2man by Larry Wall and Tom Christiansen.
251
253 Copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013 Russ
254 Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>.
255 This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it
257 under the same terms as Perl itself.
258perl v5.16.3 2013-01-02 POD2MAN(1)