1POD2TEXT(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide POD2TEXT(1)
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6 pod2text - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text
7
9 pod2text [-aclostu] [--code] [-i indent] [-q quotes]
10 [--stderr] [-w width] [input [output ...]]
11 pod2text -h
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15 pod2text is a front-end for Pod::Text and its subclasses. It uses them
16 to generate formatted ASCII text from POD source. It can optionally
17 use either termcap sequences or ANSI color escape sequences to format
18 the text.
19 input is the file to read for POD source (the POD can be embedded in
21 code). If input isn't given, it defaults to "STDIN". output, if
22 given, is the file to which to write the formatted output. If output
23 isn't given, the formatted output is written to "STDOUT". Several POD
24 files can be processed in the same pod2text invocation (saving module
25 load and compile times) by providing multiple pairs of input and output
26 files on the command line.
27
29 -a, --alt
30 Use an alternate output format that, among other things, uses a
31 different heading style and marks "=item" entries with a colon in
32 the left margin.
33 --code
35 Include any non-POD text from the input file in the output as well.
36 Useful for viewing code documented with POD blocks with the POD
37 rendered and the code left intact.
38 -c, --color
40 Format the output with ANSI color escape sequences. Using this
41 option requires that Term::ANSIColor be installed on your system.
42 -i indent, --indent=indent
44 Set the number of spaces to indent regular text, and the default
45 indentation for "=over" blocks. Defaults to 4 spaces if this
46 option isn't given.
47 -h, --help
49 Print out usage information and exit.
50 -l, --loose
52 Print a blank line after a "=head1" heading. Normally, no blank
53 line is printed after "=head1", although one is still printed after
54 "=head2", because this is the expected formatting for manual pages;
55 if you're formatting arbitrary text documents, using this option is
56 recommended.
57 -m width, --left-margin=width, --margin=width
59 The width of the left margin in spaces. Defaults to 0. This is
60 the margin for all text, including headings, not the amount by
61 which regular text is indented; for the latter, see -i option.
62 -o, --overstrike
64 Format the output with overstrike printing. Bold text is rendered
65 as character, backspace, character. Italics and file names are
66 rendered as underscore, backspace, character. Many pagers, such as
67 less, know how to convert this to bold or underlined text.
68 -q quotes, --quotes=quotes
70 Sets the quote marks used to surround C<> text to quotes. If
71 quotes is a single character, it is used as both the left and right
72 quote; if quotes is two characters, the first character is used as
73 the left quote and the second as the right quoted; and if quotes is
74 four characters, the first two are used as the left quote and the
75 second two as the right quote.
76 quotes may also be set to the special value "none", in which case
78 no quote marks are added around C<> text.
79 -s, --sentence
81 Assume each sentence ends with two spaces and try to preserve that
82 spacing. Without this option, all consecutive whitespace in non-
83 verbatim paragraphs is compressed into a single space.
84 --stderr
86 By default, pod2text puts any errors detected in the POD input in a
87 POD ERRORS section in the output manual page. If --stderr is
88 given, errors are sent to standard error instead and the POD ERRORS
89 section is suppressed.
90 -t, --termcap
92 Try to determine the width of the screen and the bold and underline
93 sequences for the terminal from termcap, and use that information
94 in formatting the output. Output will be wrapped at two columns
95 less than the width of your terminal device. Using this option
96 requires that your system have a termcap file somewhere where
97 Term::Cap can find it and requires that your system support
98 termios. With this option, the output of pod2text will contain
99 terminal control sequences for your current terminal type.
100 -u, --utf8
102 By default, pod2text tries to use the same output encoding as its
103 input encoding (to be backward-compatible with older versions).
104 This option says to instead force the output encoding to UTF-8.
105 Be aware that, when using this option, the input encoding of your
107 POD source must be properly declared unless it is US-ASCII or
108 Latin-1. POD input without an "=encoding" command will be assumed
109 to be in Latin-1, and if it's actually in UTF-8, the output will be
110 double-encoded. See perlpod(1) for more information on the
111 "=encoding" command.
112 -w, --width=width, -width
114 The column at which to wrap text on the right-hand side. Defaults
115 to 76, unless -t is given, in which case it's two columns less than
116 the width of your terminal device.
117
119 If pod2text fails with errors, see Pod::Text and Pod::Simple for
120 information about what those errors might mean. Internally, it can
121 also produce the following diagnostics:
122 -c (--color) requires Term::ANSIColor be installed
124 (F) -c or --color were given, but Term::ANSIColor could not be
125 loaded.
126 Unknown option: %s
128 (F) An unknown command line option was given.
129 In addition, other Getopt::Long error messages may result from invalid
131 command-line options.
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134 COLUMNS
135 If -t is given, pod2text will take the current width of your screen
136 from this environment variable, if available. It overrides
137 terminal width information in TERMCAP.
138 TERMCAP
140 If -t is given, pod2text will use the contents of this environment
141 variable if available to determine the correct formatting sequences
142 for your current terminal device.
143
145 Pod::Text, Pod::Text::Color, Pod::Text::Overstrike, Pod::Text::Termcap,
146 Pod::Simple, perlpod(1)
147 The current version of this script is always available from its web
149 site at <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/podlators/>. It is also
150 part of the Perl core distribution as of 5.6.0.
151
153 Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>.
154
156 Copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2008 Russ Allbery
157 <rra@stanford.edu>.
158 This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it
160 under the same terms as Perl itself.
161perl v5.12.4 2011-11-04 POD2TEXT(1)