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by root (Scribe)
on Dec 23, 1999 at 00:52 UTC ( #1236=perlfunc: print w/ replies, xml ) Need Help??


See the current Perl documentation for Pod::Text.


Pod::Text - convert POD data to formatted ASCII text

        use Pod::Text;



        pod2text [B<-a>] [B<->I<width>] < input.pod

Pod::Text is a module that can convert documentation in the POD format (such as can be found throughout the Perl distribution) into formatted ASCII. Termcap is optionally supported for boldface/underline, and can enabled via $Pod::Text::termcap=1. If termcap has not been enabled, then backspaces will be used to simulate bold and underlined text.

A separate pod2text program is included that is primarily a wrapper for Pod::Text.

The single function pod2text() can take the optional options -a for an alternative output format, then a -width option with the max terminal width, followed by one or two arguments. The first should be the name of a file to read the pod from, or ``<&STDIN'' to read from STDIN. A second argument, if provided, should be a filehandle glob where output should be sent.


Tom Christiansen <>


Cleanup work. The input and output locations need to be more flexible, termcap shouldn't be a global variable, and the terminal speed needs to be properly calculated.

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