Most paragraphs in your documentation will be ordinary blocksof text, like this one. You can simply type in your text withoutany markup whatsoever, and with just a blank line before andafter. When it gets formatted, it will undergo minimal formatting, like being rewrapped, probably put into a proportionally spacedfont, and maybe even justified.

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

Verbatim Paragraph

Verbatim paragraphs are usually used for presenting a codeblock orother 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 characterbe a space or a tab. (And commonly, all its lines begin with spacesand/or tabs.) It should be reproduced exactly, with tabs assumed tobe on 8-column boundaries. There are no special formatting codes,so you can't italicize or anything like that. A \ means \, andnothing else.

Command Paragraph

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

All command paragraphs (which are typically only one line long) startwith "=", followed by an identifier, followed by arbitrary text thatthe command can use however it pleases. Currently recognized commandsare

 =pod
  =head1 Heading Text
  =head2 Heading Text
  =head3 Heading Text
  =head4 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
Head1 through head4 produce headings, head1 being the highestlevel. The text in the rest of this paragraph is the content of theheading. For example:
```
 =head2 Object Attributes
 
```
The text "Object Attributes" comprises the heading there. (Note thathead3 and head4 are recent additions, not supported in older Podtranslators.) The text in these heading commands can useformatting codes, as seen here:
```
 =head2 Possible Values for C<$/>
 
```
Such commands are explained in the"Formatting Codes" section, below.
=over indentlevel
=item stuff...
=back
Item, over, and back require a little more explanation: "=over" startsa region specifically for the generation of a list using "=item"commands, or for indenting (groups of) normal paragraphs. At the endof your list, use "=back" to end it. The indentlevel option to"=over" indicates how far over to indent, generally in ems (whereone em is the width of an "M" in the document's base font) or roughlycomparable units; if there is no indentlevel option, it defaultsto four. (And some formatters may just ignore whatever indentlevelyou provide.) In the stuff in =item stuff..., you mayuse 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", unlessthere 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 ornumbers.
 If you start with bullets or numbers, stick with them, asformatters use the first "=item" type to decide how to format thelist.
=cut
To end a Pod block, use a blank line,then a line beginning with "=cut", and a blankline after it. This lets Perl (and the Pod formatter) know thatthis is where Perl code is resuming. (The blank line before the "=cut"is not technically necessary, but many older Pod processors require it.)
=pod
The "=pod" command by itself doesn't do much of anything, but itsignals to Perl (and Pod formatters) that a Pod block starts here. APod block starts with any command paragraph, so a "=pod" command isusually used just when you want to start a Pod block with an ordinaryparagraph or a verbatim paragraph. For example:
```
  =item stuff()
 
   This function does stuff.
 
   =cut
 
   sub stuff {
  ...
   }
 
   =pod
 
   Remember to check its return value, as in:
 
  stuff() || die "Couldn't do stuff!";
 
   =cut
 
```
=begin formatname
=end formatname
=for formatname text...
For, begin, and end will let you have regions of text/code/data thatare not generally interpreted as normal Pod text, but are passeddirectly to particular formatters, or are otherwise special. Aformatter that can use that format will use the region, otherwise itwill be completely ignored.
A command "=begin formatname", some paragraphs, and acommand "=end formatname", mean that the text/data in betweenis meant for formatters that understand the special formatcalled formatname. For example,
```
 =begin html
 
 <hr> <img src="thang.png">
 This is a raw HTML paragraph 
 
 =end html
 
```
The command "=for formatname text..."specifies that the remainder of just this paragraph (startingright after formatname) is in that special format.
```
 =for html <hr> <img src="thang.png">
 This is a raw HTML paragraph 
 
```
This means the same thing as the above "=begin html" ... "=end html"region.
That is, with "=for", you can have only one paragraph's worthof text (i.e., the text in "=foo targetname text..."), but with"=begin targetname" ... "=end targetname", you can have any amountof stuff in between. (Note that there still must be a blank lineafter the "=begin" command and a blank line before the "=end"command.
Here are some examples of how to use these:
```
 =begin html
 
 Figure 1. <IMG SRC="figure1.png"> 
 
 =end html
 
 =begin text
 
 ---------------
 | foo |
 | bar |
 ---------------
 
 ^^^^ Figure 1. ^^^^
 
 =end text
 
```
Some format names that formatters currently are known to acceptinclude "roff", "man", "latex", "tex", "text", and "html". (Someformatters will treat some of these as synonyms.)
A format name of "comment" is common for just making notes (presumablyto yourself) that won't appear in any formatted version of the Poddocument:
```
 =for comment
 Make sure that all the available options are documented!
 
```
Some formatnames will require a leading colon (as in"=for :formatname", or"=begin :formatname" ... "=end :formatname"),to signal that the text is not raw data, but instead is Pod text(i.e., possibly containing formatting codes) that's just not fornormal formatting (e.g., may not be a normal-use paragraph, but mightbe for formatting as a footnote).
=encoding encodingname
This command is used for declaring the encoding of a document. Mostusers won't need this; but if your encoding isn't US-ASCII or Latin-1,then put a =encoding encodingname command early in the document sothat pod formatters will know how to decode the document. Forencodingname, use a name recognized by the Encode::Supportedmodule. Examples:
```
  =encoding utf8
 
   =encoding koi8-r
   
   =encoding ShiftJIS
   
   =encoding big5
 
```

=encoding affects the whole document, and must occur only once.

And don't forget, when using any other command, that the command lasts upuntil the end of its paragraph, not its line. So in theexamples below, you can see that every command needs the blankline after it, to end its paragraph.

Some examples of lists include:

  =over
 
   =item *
 
   First item
 
   =item *
 
   Second item
 
   =back
 
   =over
 
   =item Foo()
 
   Description of Foo function
 
   =item Bar()
 
   Description of Bar function
 
   =back

Formatting Codes

In ordinary paragraphs and in some command paragraphs, variousformatting codes (a.k.a. "interior sequences") can be used:

I<text> -- italic text
Used for emphasis ("be I<careful!>") and parameters("redo I<LABEL>")
B<text> -- bold text
Used for switches ("perl's B<-n> switch"), programs("some systems provide a B<chfn> for that"),emphasis ("be B<careful!>"), and so on("and that feature is known as B<autovivification>").
C<code> -- code text
Renders code in a typewriter font, or gives some other indication thatthis represents program text ("C<gmtime($^T)>") or some otherform of computerese ("C<drwxr-xr-x>").
L<name> -- a hyperlink
There are various syntaxes, listed below. In the syntaxes given,text, name, and section cannot contain the characters'/' and '|'; and any '<' or '>' should be matched.
- L<name>
 Link to a Perl manual page (e.g., L<Net::Ping>). Notethat name should not contain spaces. This syntaxis also occasionally used for references to Unix man pages, as inL<crontab(5)>.
- L<name/"sec"> or L<name/sec>
 Link to a section in other manual page. E.g.,L<perlsyn/"For Loops">
- L</"sec"> or L</sec>
 Link to a section in this manual page. E.g.,L</"Object Methods">
A section is started by the named heading or item. Forexample, L<perlvar/$.> or L<perlvar/"$."> bothlink to the section started by "=item $." in perlvar. AndL<perlsyn/For Loops> or L<perlsyn/"For Loops">both link to the section started by "=head2 For Loops"in perlsyn.
To control what text is used for display, youuse "L<text|...>", as in:
- L<text|name>
 Link this text to that manual page. E.g.,L<Perl Error Messages|perldiag>
- L<text|name/"sec"> or L<text|name/sec>
 Link this text to that section in that manual page. E.g.,L<postfix "if"|perlsyn/"Statement Modifiers">
- L<text|/"sec"> or L<text|/sec>or L<text|"sec">
 Link this text to that section in this manual page. E.g.,L<the various attributes|/"Member Data">
Or you can link to a web page:
- L<scheme:...>
 L<text|scheme:...>
 Links to an absolute URL. For example, L<http://www.perl.org/> orL<The Perl Home Page|http://www.perl.org/>.
E<escape> -- a character escape
Very similar to HTML/XML &foo; "entity references":
- E<lt> -- a literal < (less than)
- E<gt> -- a literal > (greater than)
- E<verbar> -- a literal | (vertical bar)
- E<sol> -- a literal / (solidus)
 The above four are optional except in other formatting codes,notably L<...>, and when preceded by acapital letter.
- E<htmlname>
 Some non-numeric HTML entity name, such as E<eacute>,meaning the same thing as é in HTML -- i.e., a lowercasee with an acute (/-shaped) accent.
- E<number>
 The ASCII/Latin-1/Unicode character with that number. Aleading "0x" means that number is hex, as inE<0x201E>. A leading "0" means that number is octal,as in E<075>. Otherwise number is interpreted as beingin decimal, as in E<181>.
 Note that older Pod formatters might not recognize octal orhex numeric escapes, and that many formatters cannot reliablyrender characters above 255. (Some formatters may even haveto use compromised renderings of Latin-1 characters, likerendering E<eacute> as just a plain "e".)
F<filename> -- used for filenames
Typically displayed in italics. Example: "F<.cshrc>"
S<text> -- text contains non-breaking spaces
This means that the words in text should not be brokenacross lines. Example: S<$x ? $y : $z>.
X<topic name> -- an index entry
This is ignored by most formatters, but some may use it for buildingindexes. It always renders as empty-string.Example: X<absolutizing relative URLs>
Z<> -- a null (zero-effect) formatting code
This is rarely used. It's one way to get around using anE<...> code sometimes. For example, instead of"NE<lt>3" (for "N<3") you could write"NZ<><3" (the "Z<>" breaks up the "N" andthe "<" so they can't be consideredthe part of a (fictitious) "N<...>" code.

Most of the time, you will need only a single set of angle brackets todelimit the beginning and end of formatting codes. However,sometimes you will want to put a real right angle bracket (agreater-than sign, '>') inside of a formatting code. This is particularlycommon when using a formatting code to provide a different font-type for asnippet of code. As with all things in Perl, there is more thanone way to do it. One way is to simply escape the closing bracketusing an E code:

 C<$a E<lt>=E<gt> $b>

This will produce: "$a <=> $b"

A more readable, and perhaps more "plain" way is to use an alternateset of delimiters that doesn't require a single ">" to be escaped.Doubled angle brackets ("<<" and ">>") may be used if and only if there iswhitespace right after the opening delimiter and whitespace rightbefore the closing delimiter! For example, the following willdo the trick:

 C<< $a <=> $b >>

In fact, you can use as many repeated angle-brackets as you like solong as you have the same number of them in the opening and closingdelimiters, and make sure that whitespace immediately follows the last'<' of the opening delimiter, and immediately precedes the first '>'of the closing delimiter. (The whitespace is ignored.) So thefollowing will also work:

 C<<< $a <=> $b >>>
  C<<<<  $a <=> $b >>>>

And they all mean exactly the same as this:

 C<$a E<lt>=E<gt> $b>

The multiple-bracket form does not affect the interpretation of the contents ofthe formatting code, only how it must end. That means that the examples aboveare also exactly the same as this:

 C<< $a E<lt>=E<gt> $b >>

As a further example, this means that if you wanted to put these bits ofcode in C (code) style:

 open(X, ">>thing.dat") || die $!
  $foo->bar();

you could do it like so:

 C<<< open(X, ">>thing.dat") || die $! >>>
  C<< $foo->bar(); >>

which is presumably easier to read than the old way:

 C<open(X, "E<gt>E<gt>thing.dat") || die $!>
  C<$foo-E<gt>bar();>

This is currently supported by pod2text (Pod::Text), pod2man (Pod::Man),and any other pod2xxx or Pod::Xxxx translators that usePod::Parser 1.093 or later, or Pod::Tree 1.02 or later.

The Intent

The intent is simplicity of use, not power of expression. Paragraphslook like paragraphs (block format), so that they stand outvisually, and so that I could run them through fmt easily to reformatthem (that's F7 in my version of vi, or Esc Q in my version ofemacs). I wanted the translator to always leave the ' and ` and" quotes alone, in verbatim mode, so I could slurp in aworking program, shift it over four spaces, and have it print out, er,verbatim. And presumably in a monospace font.

The Pod format is not necessarily sufficient for writing a book. Podis just meant to be an idiot-proof common source for nroff, HTML,TeX, and other markup languages, as used for onlinedocumentation. Translators exist for pod2text, pod2html,pod2man (that's for nroff(1) and troff(1)), pod2latex, andpod2fm. Various others are available in CPAN.

Embedding Pods in Perl Modules

You can embed Pod documentation in your Perl modules and scripts.Start your documentation with an empty line, a "=head1" command at thebeginning, and end it with a "=cut" command and an empty line. Perlwill ignore the Pod text. See any of the supplied library modules forexamples. If you're going to put your Pod at the end of the file, andyou're using an __END__ or __DATA__ cut mark, make sure to put anempty line there before the first Pod command.

  __END__
 
   =head1 NAME
 
   Time::Local - efficiently compute time from local and GMT time

Without that empty line before the "=head1", many translators wouldn'thave recognized the "=head1" as starting a Pod block.

Hints for Writing Pod

The podchecker command is provided for checking Pod syntax for errorsand warnings. For example, it checks for completely blank lines inPod blocks and for unknown commands and formatting codes. You shouldstill also pass your document through one or more translators and proofreadthe result, or print out the result and proofread that. Some of theproblems found may be bugs in the translators, which you may or may notwish to work around.
If you're more familiar with writing in HTML than with writing in Pod, youcan try your hand at writing documentation in simple HTML, and convertingit to Pod with the experimental Pod::HTML2Pod module,(available in CPAN), and looking at the resulting code. The experimentalPod::PXML module in CPAN might also be useful.

Many older Pod translators require the lines before every Podcommand and after every Pod command (including "=cut"!) to be a blankline. Having something like this:

 # - - - - - - - - - - - -
  =item $firecracker->boom()
 
  This noisily detonates the firecracker object.
  =cut
  sub boom {
  ...

...will make such Pod translators completely fail to see the Pod blockat all.

Instead, have it like this:

 # - - - - - - - - - - - -
 
  =item $firecracker->boom()
 
  This noisily detonates the firecracker object.
 
  =cut
 
  sub boom {
  ...

Some older Pod translators require paragraphs (including commandparagraphs like "=head2 Functions") to be separated by completelyempty lines. If you have an apparently empty line with some spaceson it, this might not count as a separator for those translators, andthat could cause odd formatting.
Older translators might add wording around an L<> link, so thatL<Foo::Bar> may become "the Foo::Bar manpage", for example.So you shouldn't write things like the L<foo>documentation, if you want the translated document to read sensibly.Instead, write the L<Foo::Bar|Foo::Bar> documentation orL<the Foo::Bar documentation|Foo::Bar>, to control how thelink comes out.
Going past the 70th column in a verbatim block might be ungracefullywrapped by some formatters.

AUTHOR

Larry Wall, Sean M. Burke

Page index

NAME
DESCRIPTION
SEE ALSO
AUTHOR

Source : perldoc.perl.org - Official documentation for the Perl programming language
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