Plain Old Text Documentation in Perl Programming

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

There are various translators available for converting Pod to different formats such as plain text, HTML, man pages, and more. Pod markup comprises of three kinds of paragraphs :

Ordinary Paragraph: For bold, italic, code-style, hyperlinks, and more use formatting code in ordinary graph
Verbatim Paragraph: Code block or other text which does not require any special parsing or formatting are implemented using, and these should not be wrapped too.
Command Paragraph: A command paragraph is used for chunks of text, usually used as headings or parts of lists. Command paragraphs start with =, followed by an identifier and an arbitrary text

To embed Pod (Plain Old Text) documentation in Perl modules and scripts , use embedded documentation in your Perl Code by using following rules:

Start your documentation with an empty line
Place a ‘=head1′ command at the beginning
Place a ‘=cut’ command at end

Note : Perl will ignore the Pod (Plain Old Text) text you entered in the code

Example:

=head1 SYNOPSIS
 [GEEKSFORGEEKS].
=cut

Following mentioned is a simple example of using embedded documentation inside your Perl code

#!/usr/bin/perl 

print "Hello, World\n"; 

=head1 Hello, World Example 
This example demonstrate very basic syntax of Perl. 
=cut 

print "Hello, geeksforgeeks\n"

Output:

Hello, World
Hello, geeksforgeeks

If Pod is put at the end of the file, and you are using an __END__ or __DATA__ cut mark, then make sure that you put an empty line before the first Pod command, otherwise without an empty line before the =head1, many translators will not recognize the =head1 as starting a Pod block.

#!/usr/bin/perl 

print "Hello, World\n"; 

while(<DATA>) { 

  print $_; 
} 

__END__ 

=head1 Hello, World Example 
This example demonstrate very basic syntax of Perl. 
print "Hello, geeksforgeeks\n";

Output:

Hello, World

=head1 Hello, World Example
This example demonstrate very basic syntax of Perl.
print "Hello, geeksforgeeks\n";

Article Tags :

Perl