What is POD in Perl?

Pod is a simple-to-use markup language used for writing documentation for Perl, Perl programs, and Perl modules. There are various translators 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 Paragraph − You can use formatting codes in ordinary paragraphs, for bold, italic, code-style , hyperlinks, and more.
• 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.
• 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 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
=over indentlevel
=item stuff
=back
=begin format
=end format
=for format text...
=encoding type
=cut

POD Examples

Consider the following POD −

=head1 SYNOPSIS
Copyright 2005 [TUTORIALSOPOINT].
=cut

You can use pod2html utility available on Linux to convert above POD into HTML, so it will produce following result −

Copyright 2005 [TUTORIALSOPOINT]

Next, consider the following example −

=head2 An Example List
=over 4
=item * This is a bulleted list.
=item * Here's another item.
=back
=begin html
<p>
Here's some embedded HTML. In this block I can
include images, apply <span style="color: green">
styles</span>, or do anything else I can do with
HTML. pod parsers that aren't outputting HTML will
completely ignore it.
</p>
=end html

When you convert the above POD into HTML using pod2html, it will produce the following result −

An Example List
This is a bulleted list.
Here's another item.
Here's some embedded HTML. In this block I can include images, apply
styles, or do anything else I can do with HTML. pod parsers that aren't
outputting HTML will completely ignore it.