NAME

Pod::Help - Perl module to automate POD display

SYNOPSIS

  use Pod::Help qw(-h --help);

  -or-

  use Pod::Help;
  ...
  Pod::Help->help() if (...);

  -or-
  use Pod::Help;
  ...
  Pod::Help->help('ACME::PodLib::FooPod');

DESCRIPTION

Pod::Help allows your script or program to automaticlly display its POD when the user gives a certain command line parameter.

Note: 'script or program'! I mean it, Pod::Help is not intended to be used by other modules.

There are three different ways to use Pod::Help:

fully automatic

For fully automatic mode just use() Pod::Help and give it the command line parameters it should be triggered by as parameters:

  use Pod::Help qw(-h --help);

That's it, nothing more to do.

manually triggered

If you don't want Pod::Help to fiddle with your @ARGV, you may trigger the POD display manually. Use() Pod::Help without (or with an empty) parameter list and it will do nothing on its own. You may then call Pod::Help->help() at any time.

  use Pod::Help;
  ...
  Pod::Help->help() if (...);

POD from different file

If you have the POD in a different file you must use the manual mode. Then give the module name of the file containing your POD to the help() method.

  use Pod::Help;
  ...
  Pod::Help->help('ACME::PodLib::FooPod');

If the POD is in a file that cannot be found that way, give '-F' and the file name and path to help().

  use Pod::Help;
  ...
  Pod::Help->help('-F', $installdir.'/docs/scripts/podhelp/foo.pod');

You may give any parameters to help() that perldoc would accept, too.

METHODS

help()

Calling help() will try to display the POD and exit. For details, see above.

HISTORY

0.99

Original version; created by h2xs 1.23 with options

  -A
        -C
        -X
        -b
        5.6.0
        -n
        Pod::Help
        --use-new-tests
        --skip-exporter
        -v
        0.99

1.00

Updated packaging for newer standards. No changes to the coding.

SEE ALSO

For more information on perldoc and the Perl documentation format 'POD' see perldoc, perlpod or perlpodspec.

AUTHOR

Michael Jacob, <jacob@j-e-b.net>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2004, 2007 by Michael Jacob

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.2 or, at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.