POD2MAN(1) User Contributed Perl Documentation POD2MAN(1)
NAME
pod2man - Convert POD data to formatted *roff input
SYNOPSIS
pod2man [--center=string] [--date=string] [--errors=style]
[--fixed=font] [--fixedbold=font] [--fixeditalic=font]
[--fixedbolditalic=font] [--name=name] [--nourls]
[--official] [--quotes=quotes] [--release[=version]]
[--section=manext] [--stderr] [--utf8] [--verbose]
[input [output] ...]
pod2man --help
DESCRIPTION
pod2man 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 nroff(1), normally via man(1), or printing using troff(1).
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 pod2man invocation
(saving module load and compile times) by providing multiple pairs of input and output files on the command
line.
--section, --release, --center, --date, and --official 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.
pod2man assumes that your *roff formatters have a fixed-width font named "CW". If yours is called something
else (like "CR"), use --fixed 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 func(),
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.
OPTIONS
-c string, --center=string
Sets the centered page header to string. The default is "User Contributed Perl Documentation", but also
see --official below.
-d string, --date=string
Set the left-hand footer string to this value. By default, the modification date of the input file will
be used, or the current date if input comes from "STDIN".
-errors=style
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".
--fixed=font
The fixed-width font to use for verbatim text and code. Defaults to "CW". Some systems may want "CR"
instead. Only matters for troff(1) output.
matters for troff(1) output.
-h, --help
Print out usage information.
-l, --lax
No longer used. pod2man used to check its input for validity as a manual page, but this should now be
done by podchecker(1) instead. Accepted for backward compatibility; this option no longer does anything.
-n name, --name=name
Set the name of the manual page to name. 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.
Note that this option is probably not useful when converting multiple POD files at once. 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.
--nourls
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, --official
Set the default header to indicate that this page is part of the standard Perl release, if --center is not
also given.
-q quotes, --quotes=quotes
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; if quotes is two characters, the first character is used as the left quote
and the second as the right quoted; and if quotes is four characters, the first two are used as the left
quote and the second two 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
(but the font is still changed for troff output).
-r, --release
Set the centered footer. By default, this is the version of Perl you run pod2man under. 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, you may want to set --release to the last modified
date and --date to the version number.
-s, --section
Set the section for the ".TH" macro. The standard section numbering convention is to use 1 for user
equivalent to "--errors=stderr" and is supported for backward compatibility.
-u, --utf8
By default, pod2man produces the most conservative possible *roff output to try to ensure that it will
work with as many different *roff implementations as possible. Many *roff implementations cannot handle
non-ASCII characters, so this means all non-ASCII characters are converted either to a *roff escape
sequence that tries to create a properly accented character (at least for troff output) or to "X".
This option says to instead output literal UTF-8 characters. If your *roff implementation can handle it,
this is the best output format to use and avoids corruption of documents containing non-ASCII characters.
However, be warned that *roff source with literal UTF-8 characters is not supported by many
implementations and may even result in segfaults and other bad behavior.
Be aware that, when using this option, the input encoding of your POD source must be properly declared
unless it is US-ASCII or Latin-1. POD input without an "=encoding" command will be assumed to be in
Latin-1, and if it's actually in UTF-8, the output will be double-encoded. See perlpod(1) for more
information on the "=encoding" command.
-v, --verbose
Print out the name of each output file as it is being generated.
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"), pod2man will exit with status 0. If any of the documents being
processed do not result in an output document, pod2man 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", pod2man will abort
immediately with exit status 255.
DIAGNOSTICS
If pod2man fails with errors, see Pod::Man and Pod::Simple for information about what those errors might mean.
EXAMPLES
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 man(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.
BUGS
Lots of this documentation is duplicated from Pod::Man.
SEE ALSO
Pod::Man, Pod::Simple, man(1), nroff(1), perlpod(1), podchecker(1), perlpodstyle(1), troff(1), man(7)
This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
perl v5.16.3 2013-01-02 POD2MAN(1)
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