PERLPOD(1)

💅 PERLPOD(1) 💅

fresh out of the Perl Programmers Reference Guide ✨ okay so today we're doing perlpod, and by the time we're done your docs are gonna have main character energy, no cap 💖

🦋 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 🫶

And bestie, there are translators out there that convert Pod into all sorts of formats like plain text, HTML, man pages, and more. write it once, ship it everywhere. iconic behavior 💅

Pod markup is literally just three basic kinds of paragraphs, that's the whole thing:

• ordinary paragraphs
• verbatim paragraphs
• command paragraphs

let's go 🌈

---

📝 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. lowkey effortless ✨

And 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. it's giving "leave it exactly how I typed it" energy 🧊

So how do you make one? 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 ⭐

⚠️ heads up: there are no special formatting codes in here, 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:

🎀 the heading commands

• =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. And 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.

📌 real talk: 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. check before you commit, bestie.

🎀 =over indentlevel, =item stuff..., and =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 =items 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.) 🙈

🎀 =pod

The =pod command by itself doesn't do much of anything, but it signals to Perl (and Pod formatters) that a Pod block starts here. A Pod block starts with any command paragraph, so a =pod command is usually used just when you want to start a Pod block with an ordinary paragraph 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, and =for formatname text...

For, begin, and end will let you have regions of text/code/data that are not generally interpreted as normal Pod text, but are passed directly to particular formatters, or are otherwise special. A formatter that can use that format will use the region, otherwise it will be completely ignored. 💀

A command =begin formatname, some paragraphs, and a command =end formatname, mean that the text/data in between is meant for formatters that understand the special format called formatname. For example,

=begin html

<hr> <img src="thang.png">
<p> This is a raw HTML paragraph </p>

=end html

The command =for formatname text... specifies that the remainder of just this paragraph (starting right after formatname) is in that special format.

=for html <hr> <img src="thang.png">
<p> This is a raw HTML paragraph </p>

This means the same thing as the above =begin html ... =end html region.

That is, with =for, you can have only one paragraph's worth of text (i.e., the text in =foo targetname text...), but with =begin targetname ... =end targetname, you can have any amount of stuff in between. (Note that there still must be a blank line after the =begin command and a blank line before the =end command.)

Here are some examples of how to use these:

=begin html

<br>Figure 1.<br><IMG SRC="figure1.png"><br>

=end html

=begin text

  ---------------
  |  foo        |
  |        bar  |
  ---------------

^^^^ Figure 1. ^^^^

=end text

Some format names that formatters currently are known to accept include "roff", "man", "latex", "tex", "text", and "html". (Some formatters will treat some of these as synonyms.)

A format name of "comment" is common for just making notes (presumably to yourself) that won't appear in any formatted version of the Pod document:

=for comment
Make sure that all the available options are documented!

Some *formatname*s 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 for normal formatting (e.g., may not be a normal-use paragraph, but might be for formatting as a footnote).

🎀 =encoding encodingname

This command is used for declaring the encoding of a document. Most users won't need this; but if your encoding isn't US-ASCII, then put a =encoding encodingname command very early in the document so that pod formatters will know how to decode the document. For encodingname, use a name recognized by the Encode::Supported module. Some pod formatters may try to guess between a Latin-1 or CP-1252 versus UTF-8 encoding, but they may guess wrong. It's best to be explicit if you use anything besides strict ASCII. Examples:

=encoding latin1

=encoding utf8

=encoding koi8-r

=encoding ShiftJIS

=encoding big5

=encoding affects the whole document, and must occur only once. one and done, bestie 🎀

---

And don't forget, all commands but =encoding last up until the end of its paragraph, not its line. So in the examples below, you can see that every command needs the blank line after it, to end its paragraph. (And some older Pod translators may require the =encoding line to have a following blank line as well, even though it should be legal to omit.)

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, various formatting 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>"").
• U<text> — underline text, bestie 💅. Heads up though: this is a 2024 addition, so it might not exist in every processor or output format. And lowkey, some output formats literally can't do both italic AND underline, so even if both get recognised, they might look <em>identical</em> on screen. It's giving "we tried our best" 😭.
• C<code> — renders code in a typewriter font, or otherwise signals "yo, this is program text" (C<gmtime($^T)>) or some other flavour of computerese (C<drwxr-xr-x>) 🖥️✨.
• L<name> — a hyperlink 🔗. So many syntaxes, babes, here's the whole menu. In every syntax below, text, name, and section cannot contain the characters '/' and '|', and any < or > should be matched up.
  • L<name> — links to a Perl manual page (like L<Net::Ping>). Ngl, name should not contain spaces. This syntax is also occasionally used for Unix man page refs, as in L<crontab(5)>.
  • L<name/"sec"> or L<name/sec> — links to a section inside another manual page. E.g. L<perlsyn/"For Loops">.
  • L</"sec"> or L</sec> — links to a section inside this manual page. E.g. L</"Object Methods">.

A section gets started by the named heading or item. For example, L<perlvar/$.> or L<perlvar/"$."> both link to the section started by "=item $." in perlvar. And L<perlsyn/For Loops> or L<perlsyn/"For Loops"> both link to the section started by "=head2 For Loops" in perlsyn. iconic behaviour fr 💖.

Wanna control what text shows up as the display? You use "L<text|...>", like:

• 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/> or L<The Perl Home Page|http://www.perl.org/>. slay.

• E<escape> — a character escape. Super similar to HTML/XML &foo; entity references, no cap:
  • E<lt> — a literal < (less than)
  • E<gt> — a literal > (greater than)
  • E<verbar> — a literal | (vertical bar)
  • E<sol> — a literal / (solidus)

Those four above are optional except inside other formatting codes — notably L<...> — and when preceded by a capital letter 👀.

• E<htmlname> — some non-numeric HTML entity name, like E<eacute>, meaning the exact same thing as é in HTML — i.e., a lowercase e with an acute (/-shaped) accent.
• E<number> — the ASCII/Latin-1/Unicode character with that number. A leading 0x means it's hex, as in E<0x201E>. A leading 0 means octal, as in E<075>. Otherwise the number is read as decimal, as in E<181>.

Bestie, be careful: older Pod formatters might not recognise octal or hex numeric escapes at all, and many formatters can't reliably render characters above 255. Some formatters may even have to use compromised renderings of Latin-1/CP-1252 characters — like rendering E<eacute> as just a plain e 💀. That's the vibe. Tragic.

• F<filename> — used for filenames. Typically displayed in italics. Example: "F<.cshrc>" 📁.
• S<text> — text contains non-breaking spaces. This means the words in text should not be broken across lines. Example: S<$x ? $y : $z>.
• X<topic name> — an index entry. Most formatters literally ignore this, but some may use it for building indexes. It always renders as empty-string. Example: X<absolutizing relative URLs>.
• Z<> — a null (zero-effect) formatting code. Rarely used, ngl. It's one way to get around using an E<...> code sometimes. For example, instead of "NE<lt>3" (for N<3) you could write "NZ<><3" — the Z<> breaks up the N and the < so they can't be considered part of a (fictitious) N<...> code 🧠✨.

Another use is to say that stuff in "=item Z<>stuff..." is not to be considered a bullet or number. For example, without the Z<>, the line

=item Z<>500 Server error

could possibly be parsed as an item in a numbered list when it isn't meant to be. sneaky.

Still another use is keeping visual space between =item lines. If you write

=item foo

=item bar

it will typically render as

foo
bar

That may be exactly what you want, but if what you really want is

foo

bar

you can use Z<> to make it happen:

=item foo

Z<>

=item bar

---

Most of the time you'll only need a single set of angle brackets to delimit the start and end of formatting codes. But sometimes you wanna put a real right angle bracket (a greater-than sign, >) inside a formatting code. This is especially common when you're using a formatting code to give a different font-type to a snippet of code. And as with all things in Perl, there is more than one way to do it 🌈. One way is to just escape the closing bracket with an E code:

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

This will produce: "$a <=> $b" ✨

A more readable, and maybe more "plain" way, is using an alternate set of delimiters that doesn't require a single > to be escaped. Doubled angle brackets (<< and >>) may be used if and only if there's whitespace right after the opening delimiter and whitespace right before the closing delimiter! For example, this does the trick:

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

And fr fr, you can use as many repeated angle-brackets as you like, as long as you have the same number of them in the opening and closing delimiters, and you make sure whitespace immediately follows the last < of the opening delimiter, and immediately precedes the first > of the closing delimiter. (The whitespace gets ignored.) So this also works:

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 how the contents of the formatting code get interpreted — only how it has to end. Which means the examples above are also exactly the same as this:

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

As a further example — this means if you wanted to put these bits of code 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 use Pod::Parser 1.093 or later, or Pod::Tree 1.02 or later. we love compatibility 🫶.

---

🎀 The Intent 🎀

The intent is simplicity of use, not power of expression. Paragraphs look like paragraphs (block format), so they stand out visually, and so I could run them through fmt easily to reformat them (that's F7 in my version of vi, or Esc Q in my version of emacs) 🧚. I wanted the translator to always leave the "'" and "`" and """ quotes alone, in verbatim mode, so I could slurp in a working 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 📚. Pod is just meant to be an idiot-proof common source for nroff, HTML, TeX, and other markup languages, as used for online documentation. Translators exist for pod2text, pod2html, pod2man (that's for nroff(1) and troff(1)), pod2latex, and pod2fm. Various others are available in CPAN. the ecosystem ate 💜.

---

🦋 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 the beginning, and end it with a =cut command and an empty line. The perl executable will ignore the Pod text. You can place a Pod statement where perl expects the beginning of a new statement, but not within a statement — because that would result in an error 😭. See any of the supplied library modules for examples.

If you're gonna put your Pod at the end of the file, and you're using an __END__ or __DATA__ cut mark, make sure to put an empty 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't have recognised the =head1 as starting a Pod block. little detail, big consequences 💅.

---

🌸 Hints for Writing Pod 🌸

• The podchecker command is provided for checking Pod syntax for errors and warnings. For example, it checks for completely blank lines in Pod blocks and for unknown commands and formatting codes. You should still also pass your document through one or more translators and proofread the result, or print out the result and proofread that. Some of the problems found may be bugs in the translators, which you may or may not wish to work around. iykyk.
• If you're more familiar with writing in HTML than with writing in Pod, you can try your hand at writing documentation in simple HTML, and converting it to Pod with the experimental Pod::HTML2Pod module, (available in CPAN), and looking at the resulting code. The experimental Pod::PXML module in CPAN might also be useful. 🧪
• Many older Pod translators require the lines before every Pod command and after every Pod command (including =cut!) to be a blank line. 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 block at all 💀. Instead, have it like this:

# - - - - - - - - - - - -

=item $firecracker->boom()

This noisily detonates the firecracker object.

=cut

sub boom {
...

• Okay so some older Pod translators are so picky, and they need paragraphs — yes, even command paragraphs like =head2 Functions — to be separated by lines that are completely empty. If your "empty" line secretly has a few spaces sitting on it, that might not count as a separator for those translators, and the formatting can come out looking real weird. 💀
• Older translators might sprinkle extra wording around an L<> link, so L<Foo::Bar> can turn into something like "the Foo::Bar manpage". So bestie, do not write stuff like "the L<foo> documentation" if you want the translated document to actually read sensibly. Instead, write "the L<Foo::Bar|Foo::Bar> documentation" or "L<the Foo::Bar documentation|Foo::Bar>", so you get to control how the link comes out. 👑
• Going past the 70th column inside a verbatim block might get ungracefully wrapped by some formatters. Not the vibe. Stay under 70. ✨

---

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• perlpodspec
• "PODs: Embedded Documentation" in perlsyn
• perlnewmod
• perldoc
• pod2html
• pod2man
• podchecker

---

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Larry Wall, Sean M. Burke

---

And that's a wrap on PERLPOD(1), bestie! 🎀 This whole thing is perl v5.42.3, dated 2026-08-03, so if your local copy says something different, she's a different girlie. Go forth and write the cleanest Pod anyone has ever seen — no cap, you've got this. 🫶💅🌸