CONTENTS

• NAME
• SYNOPSIS
• OPTIONS/ARGUMENTS
  • podchecker()
• DESCRIPTION
• DIAGNOSTICS
  • Errors
  • Warnings
  • Hyperlinks
• RETURN VALUE
• EXAMPLES
• INTERFACE
• AUTHOR

#NAME

Pod::Checker, podchecker() - check pod documents for syntax errors

#SYNOPSIS

use Pod::Checker;

$syntax_okay = podchecker($filepath, $outputpath, %options);

my $checker = new Pod::Checker %options;
$checker->parse_from_file($filepath, \*STDERR);

#OPTIONS/ARGUMENTS

$filepath is the input POD to read and $outputpath is where to write POD syntax error messages. Either argument may be a scalar indicating a file-path, or else a reference to an open filehandle. If unspecified, the input-file it defaults to \*STDIN, and the output-file defaults to \*STDERR.

#podchecker()

This function can take a hash of options:

#-warnings => val

Turn warnings on/off. val is usually 1 for on, but higher values trigger additional warnings. See "Warnings".

#DESCRIPTION

podchecker will perform syntax checking of Perl5 POD format documentation.

NOTE THAT THIS MODULE IS CURRENTLY IN THE BETA STAGE!

It is hoped that curious/ambitious user will help flesh out and add the additional features they wish to see in Pod::Checker and podchecker and verify that the checks are consistent with perlpod.

The following checks are currently preformed:

• Unknown '=xxxx' commands, unknown 'X<...>' interior-sequences, and unterminated interior sequences.

• Check for proper balancing of =begin and =end. The contents of such a block are generally ignored, i.e. no syntax checks are performed.

• Check for proper nesting and balancing of =over, =item and =back.

• Check for same nested interior-sequences (e.g. L<...L<...>...>).

• Check for malformed or nonexisting entities E<...>.

• Check for correct syntax of hyperlinks L<...>. See perlpod for details.

• Check for unresolved document-internal links. This check may also reveal misspelled links that seem to be internal links but should be links to something else.

#DIAGNOSTICS

#Errors

• empty =headn

  A heading (=head1 or =head2) without any text? That ain't no heading!

• =over on line N without closing =back

  The =over command does not have a corresponding =back before the next heading (=head1 or =head2) or the end of the file.

• =item without previous =over

• =back without previous =over

  An =item or =back command has been found outside a =over/=back block.

• No argument for =begin

  A =begin command was found that is not followed by the formatter specification.

• =end without =begin

  A standalone =end command was found.

• Nested =begin's

  There were at least two consecutive =begin commands without the corresponding =end. Only one =begin may be active at a time.

• =for without formatter specification

  There is no specification of the formatter after the =for command.

• unresolved internal link NAME

  The given link to NAME does not have a matching node in the current POD. This also happend when a single word node name is not enclosed in "".

• Unknown command "CMD"

  An invalid POD command has been found. Valid are =head1, =head2, =over, =item, =back, =begin, =end, =for, =pod, =cut

• Unknown interior-sequence "SEQ"

  An invalid markup command has been encountered. Valid are: B<>, C<>, E<>, F<>, I<>, L<>, S<>, X<>, Z<>

• nested commands CMD<...CMD<...>...>

  Two nested identical markup commands have been found. Generally this does not make sense.

• garbled entity STRING

  The STRING found cannot be interpreted as a character entity.

• Entity number out of range

  An entity specified by number (dec, hex, oct) is out of range (1-255).

• malformed link L<>

  The link found cannot be parsed because it does not conform to the syntax described in perlpod.

• nonempty Z<>

  The Z<> sequence is supposed to be empty.

• empty X<>

  The index entry specified contains nothing but whitespace.

• Spurious text after =pod / =cut

  The commands =pod and =cut do not take any arguments.

• Spurious character(s) after =back

  The =back command does not take any arguments.

#Warnings

These may not necessarily cause trouble, but indicate mediocre style.

• multiple occurence of link target name

  The POD file has some =item and/or =head commands that have the same text. Potential hyperlinks to such a text cannot be unique then.

• line containing nothing but whitespace in paragraph

  There is some whitespace on a seemingly empty line. POD is very sensitive to such things, so this is flagged. vi users switch on the list option to avoid this problem.

• previous =item has no contents

  There is a list =item right above the flagged line that has no text contents. You probably want to delete empty items.

• preceding non-item paragraph(s)

  A list introduced by =over starts with a text or verbatim paragraph, but continues with =items. Move the non-item paragraph out of the =over/=back block.

• =item type mismatch (one vs. two)

  A list started with e.g. a bulletted =item and continued with a numbered one. This is obviously inconsistent. For most translators the type of the first =item determines the type of the list.

• N unescaped <> in paragraph

  Angle brackets not written as <lt> and <gt> can potentially cause errors as they could be misinterpreted as markup commands. This is only printed when the -warnings level is greater than 1.

• Unknown entity

  A character entity was found that does not belong to the standard ISO set or the POD specials verbar and sol.

• No items in =over

  The list opened with =over does not contain any items.

• No argument for =item

  =item without any parameters is deprecated. It should either be followed by * to indicate an unordered list, by a number (optionally followed by a dot) to indicate an ordered (numbered) list or simple text for a definition list.

• empty section in previous paragraph

  The previous section (introduced by a =head command) does not contain any text. This usually indicates that something is missing. Note: A =head1 followed immediately by =head2 does not trigger this warning.

• Verbatim paragraph in NAME section

  The NAME section (=head1 NAME) should consist of a single paragraph with the script/module name, followed by a dash `-' and a very short description of what the thing is good for.

#Hyperlinks

There are some warnings wrt. malformed hyperlinks.

• ignoring leading/trailing whitespace in link

  There is whitespace at the beginning or the end of the contents of L<...>.

• (section) in '$page' deprecated

  There is a section detected in the page name of L<...>, e.g. L>passwd(2)>. POD hyperlinks may point to POD documents only. Please write C<passwd(2)> instead. Some formatters are able to expand this to appropriate code. For links to (builtin) functions, please say L<perlfunc/mkdir>, without ().

• alternative text/node '%s' contains non-escaped | or /

  The characters | and / are special in the L<...> context. Although the hyperlink parser does its best to determine which "/" is text and which is a delimiter in case of doubt, one ought to escape these literal characters like this:

  /     E<sol>
  |     E<verbar>

#RETURN VALUE

podchecker returns the number of POD syntax errors found or -1 if there were no POD commands at all found in the file.

#EXAMPLES

[T.B.D.]

#INTERFACE

While checking, this module collects document properties, e.g. the nodes for hyperlinks (=headX, =item) and index entries (X<>). POD translators can use this feature to syntax-check and get the nodes in a first pass before actually starting to convert. This is expensive in terms of execution time, but allows for very robust conversions.

#Pod::Checker->new( %options )

Return a reference to a new Pod::Checker object that inherits from Pod::Parser and is used for calling the required methods later. The following options are recognized:

-warnings => num Print warnings if num is true. The higher the value of num, the more warnings are printed. Currently there are only levels 1 and 2.

-quiet => num If num is true, do not print any errors/warnings. This is useful when Pod::Checker is used to munge POD code into plain text from within POD formatters.

#$checker->poderror( @args )

#$checker->poderror( {%opts}, @args )

Internal method for printing errors and warnings. If no options are given, simply prints "@_". The following options are recognized and used to form the output:

-msg

A message to print prior to @args.

-line

The line number the error occurred in.

-file

The file (name) the error occurred in.

-severity

The error level, should be 'WARNING' or 'ERROR'.

#$checker->num_errors()

Set (if argument specified) and retrieve the number of errors found.

#$checker->name()

Set (if argument specified) and retrieve the canonical name of POD as found in the =head1 NAME section.

#$checker->node()

Add (if argument specified) and retrieve the nodes (as defined by =headX and =item) of the current POD. The nodes are returned in the order of their occurence. They consist of plain text, each piece of whitespace is collapsed to a single blank.

#$checker->idx()

Add (if argument specified) and retrieve the index entries (as defined by X<>) of the current POD. They consist of plain text, each piece of whitespace is collapsed to a single blank.

#$checker->hyperlink()

Add (if argument specified) and retrieve the hyperlinks (as defined by L<>) of the current POD. They consist of an 2-item array: line number and Pod::Hyperlink object.

#AUTHOR

Brad Appleton <bradapp@enteract.com> (initial version), Marek Rouchal <marek@saftsack.fs.uni-bayreuth.de>

Based on code for Pod::Text::pod2text() written by Tom Christiansen <tchrist@mox.perl.com>

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