CONTENTS

• NAME
• DESCRIPTION
  • Ordinary Paragraph
  • Verbatim Paragraph
  • Command Paragraph
  • Formatting Codes
  • The Intent
  • Embedding Pods in Perl Modules
  • Hints for Writing Pod
• SEE ALSO
• AUTHOR

#NAME

perlpod - the Plain Old Documentation format

#DESCRIPTION

Pod is a simple-to-use markup language used for writing documentation for Perl, Perl programs, and Perl modules.

Translators are available for converting Pod to various formats like plain text, HTML, man pages, and more.

Pod markup consists of three basic kinds of paragraphs: ordinary, verbatim, and command.

#Ordinary Paragraph

Most paragraphs in your documentation will be ordinary blocks of text, like this one. You can simply type in your text without any markup whatsoever, and with just a blank line before and after. When it gets formatted, it will undergo minimal formatting, like being rewrapped, probably put into a proportionally spaced font, and maybe even justified.

You can use formatting codes in ordinary paragraphs, for bold, italic, code-style, hyperlinks, and more. Such codes are explained in the "Formatting Codes" section, below.

#Verbatim Paragraph

Verbatim paragraphs are usually used for presenting a codeblock or other text which does not require any special parsing or formatting, and which shouldn't be wrapped.

A verbatim paragraph is distinguished by having its first character be a space or a tab. (And commonly, all its lines begin with spaces and/or tabs.) It should be reproduced exactly, with tabs assumed to be on 8-column boundaries. There are no special formatting codes, so you can't italicize or anything like that. A \ means \, and nothing else.

#Command Paragraph

A command paragraph is used for special treatment of whole chunks of text, usually as headings or parts of lists.

All command paragraphs (which are typically only one line long) start with "=", followed by an identifier, followed by arbitrary text that the command can use however it pleases. Currently recognized commands are

=pod
=head1 Heading Text
=head2 Heading Text
=head3 Heading Text
=head4 Heading Text
=head5 Heading Text
=head6 Heading Text
=over indentlevel
=item stuff
=back
=begin format
=end format
=for format text...
=encoding type
=cut

To explain them each in detail:

#=head1 Heading Text

#=head2 Heading Text

#=head3 Heading Text

#=head4 Heading Text

#=head5 Heading Text

#=head6 Heading Text

Head1 through head6 produce headings, head1 being the highest level. The text in the rest of this paragraph is the content of the heading. For example:

=head2 Object Attributes

The text "Object Attributes" comprises the heading there. The text in these heading commands can use formatting codes, as seen here:

=head2 Possible Values for C<$/>

Such commands are explained in the "Formatting Codes" section, below.

Note that head5 and head6 were introduced in 2020 and in Pod::Simple 3.41, released in October 2020, so they might not be supported on the Pod parser you use.

#=over indentlevel

#=item stuff...

#=back

Item, over, and back require a little more explanation: "=over" starts a region specifically for the generation of a list using "=item" commands, or for indenting (groups of) normal paragraphs. At the end of your list, use "=back" to end it. The indentlevel option to "=over" indicates how far over to indent, generally in ems (where one em is the width of an "M" in the document's base font) or roughly comparable units; if there is no indentlevel option, it defaults to four. (And some formatters may just ignore whatever indentlevel you provide.) In the stuff in =item stuff..., you may use formatting codes, as seen here:

=item Using C<$|> to Control Buffering

Such commands are explained in the "Formatting Codes" section, below.

Note also that there are some basic rules to using "=over" ... "=back" regions:

• Don't use "=item"s outside of an "=over" ... "=back" region.

• The first thing after the "=over" command should be an "=item", unless there aren't going to be any items at all in this "=over" ... "=back" region.

• Don't put "=headn" commands inside an "=over" ... "=back" region.

• And perhaps most importantly, keep the items consistent: either use "=item *" for all of them, to produce bullets; or use "=item 1.", "=item 2.", etc., to produce numbered lists; or use "=item foo", "=item bar", etc.--namely, things that look nothing like bullets or numbers. (If you have a list that contains both: 1) things that don't look like bullets nor numbers, plus 2) things that do, you should preface the bullet- or number-like items with Z<>. See Z<> below for an example.)

  If you start with bullets or numbers, stick with them, as formatters use the first "=item" type to decide how to format the list.

#=cut

To end a Pod block, use a blank line, then a line beginning with "=cut", and a blank line after it. This lets Perl (and the Pod formatter) know that this is where Perl code is resuming. (The blank line before the "=cut" is not technically necessary, but many older Pod processors require it.)

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