Pod::Select(3p) Perl Programmers Reference Guide Pod::Select(3p)NAME
Pod::Select, podselect() - extract selected sections of POD
from input
SYNOPSIS
use Pod::Select;
## Select all the POD sections for each file in @filelist
## and print the result on standard output.
podselect(@filelist);
## Same as above, but write to tmp.out
podselect({-output => "tmp.out"}, @filelist):
## Select from the given filelist, only those POD sections that are
## within a 1st level section named any of: NAME, SYNOPSIS, OPTIONS.
podselect({-sections => ["NAME|SYNOPSIS", "OPTIONS"]}, @filelist):
## Select the "DESCRIPTION" section of the PODs from STDIN and write
## the result to STDERR.
podselect({-output => ">&STDERR", -sections => ["DESCRIPTION"]}, \*STDIN);
or
use Pod::Select;
## Create a parser object for selecting POD sections from the input
$parser = new Pod::Select();
## Select all the POD sections for each file in @filelist
## and print the result to tmp.out.
$parser->parse_from_file("<&STDIN", "tmp.out");
## Select from the given filelist, only those POD sections that are
## within a 1st level section named any of: NAME, SYNOPSIS, OPTIONS.
$parser->select("NAME|SYNOPSIS", "OPTIONS");
for (@filelist) { $parser->parse_from_file($_); }
## Select the "DESCRIPTION" and "SEE ALSO" sections of the PODs from
## STDIN and write the result to STDERR.
$parser->select("DESCRIPTION");
$parser->add_selection("SEE ALSO");
$parser->parse_from_filehandle(\*STDIN, \*STDERR);
REQUIRES
perl5.005, Pod::Parser, Exporter, Carp
EXPORTSpodselect()DESCRIPTIONpodselect() is a function which will extract specified
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sections of pod documentation from an input stream. This
ability is provided by the Pod::Select module which is a
subclass of Pod::Parser. Pod::Select provides a method named
select() to specify the set of POD sections to select for
processing/printing. podselect() merely creates a
Pod::Select object and then invokes the podselect() followed
by parse_from_file().
SECTION SPECIFICATIONSpodselect() and Pod::Select::select() may be given one or
more "section specifications" to restrict the text processed
to only the desired set of sections and their corresponding
subsections. A section specification is a string containing
one or more Perl-style regular expressions separated by for-
ward slashes ("/"). If you need to use a forward slash
literally within a section title you can escape it with a
backslash ("\/").
The formal syntax of a section specification is:
+ head1-title-regex/head2-title-regex/...
Any omitted or empty regular expressions will default to
".*". Please note that each regular expression given is
implicitly anchored by adding "^" and "$" to the beginning
and end. Also, if a given regular expression starts with a
"!" character, then the expression is negated (so "!foo"
would match anything except "foo").
Some example section specifications follow.
+ Match the "NAME" and "SYNOPSIS" sections and all of
their subsections:
"NAME|SYNOPSIS"
+ Match only the "Question" and "Answer" subsections of
the "DESCRIPTION" section:
"DESCRIPTION/Question|Answer"
+ Match the "Comments" subsection of all sections:
"/Comments"
+ Match all subsections of "DESCRIPTION" except for "Com-
ments":
"DESCRIPTION/!Comments"
+ Match the "DESCRIPTION" section but do not match any of
its subsections:
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"DESCRIPTION/!.+"
+ Match all top level sections but none of their subsec-
tions:
"/!.+"
OBJECT METHODS
The following methods are provided in this module. Each one
takes a reference to the object itself as an implicit first
parameter.
curr_headings()
($head1, $head2, $head3, ...) = $parser->curr_headings();
$head1 = $parser->curr_headings(1);
This method returns a list of the currently active section
headings and subheadings in the document being parsed. The
list of headings returned corresponds to the most recently
parsed paragraph of the input.
If an argument is given, it must correspond to the desired
section heading number, in which case only the specified
section heading is returned. If there is no current section
heading at the specified level, then "undef" is returned.
select()
$parser->select($section_spec1,$section_spec2,...);
This method is used to select the particular sections and
subsections of POD documentation that are to be printed
and/or processed. The existing set of selected sections is
replaced with the given set of sections. See add_selection()
for adding to the current set of selected sections.
Each of the $section_spec arguments should be a section
specification as described in "SECTION SPECIFICATIONS". The
section specifications are parsed by this method and the
resulting regular expressions are stored in the invoking
object.
If no $section_spec arguments are given, then the existing
set of selected sections is cleared out (which means "all"
sections will be processed).
This method should not normally be overridden by subclasses.
add_selection()
$parser->add_selection($section_spec1,$section_spec2,...);
This method is used to add to the currently selected sec-
tions and subsections of POD documentation that are to be
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printed and/or processed. See <select()> for replacing the
currently selected sections.
Each of the $section_spec arguments should be a section
specification as described in "SECTION SPECIFICATIONS". The
section specifications are parsed by this method and the
resulting regular expressions are stored in the invoking
object.
This method should not normally be overridden by subclasses.
clear_selections()
$parser->clear_selections();
This method takes no arguments, it has the exact same effect
as invoking <select()> with no arguments.
match_section()
$boolean = $parser->match_section($heading1,$heading2,...);
Returns a value of true if the given section and subsection
heading titles match any of the currently selected section
specifications in effect from prior calls to select() and
add_selection() (or if there are no explictly
selected/deselected sections).
The arguments $heading1, $heading2, etc. are the heading
titles of the corresponding sections, subsections, etc. to
try and match. If $headingN is omitted then it defaults to
the current corresponding section heading title in the
input.
This method should not normally be overridden by subclasses.
is_selected()
$boolean = $parser->is_selected($paragraph);
This method is used to determine if the block of text given
in $paragraph falls within the currently selected set of POD
sections and subsections to be printed or processed. This
method is also responsible for keeping track of the current
input section and subsections. It is assumed that $paragraph
is the most recently read (but not yet processed) input
paragraph.
The value returned will be true if the $paragraph and the
rest of the text in the same section as $paragraph should be
selected (included) for processing; otherwise a false value
is returned.
EXPORTED FUNCTIONS
The following functions are exported by this module. Please
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note that these are functions (not methods) and therefore
"do not" take an implicit first argument.
podselect()
podselect(\%options,@filelist);
podselect will print the raw (untranslated) POD paragraphs
of all POD sections in the given input files specified by
@filelist according to the given options.
If any argument to podselect is a reference to a hash (asso-
ciative array) then the values with the following keys are
processed as follows:
-output
A string corresponding to the desired output file (or
">&STDOUT" or ">&STDERR"). The default is to use stan-
dard output.
-sections
A reference to an array of sections specifications (as
described in "SECTION SPECIFICATIONS") which indicate
the desired set of POD sections and subsections to be
selected from input. If no section specifications are
given, then all sections of the PODs are used.
All other arguments should correspond to the names of input
files containing POD sections. A file name of "-" or
"<&STDIN" will be interpeted to mean standard input (which
is the default if no filenames are given).
PRIVATE METHODS AND DATAPod::Select makes uses a number of internal methods and data
fields which clients should not need to see or use. For the
sake of avoiding name collisions with client data and
methods, these methods and fields are briefly discussed
here. Determined hackers may obtain further information
about them by reading the Pod::Select source code.
Private data fields are stored in the hash-object whose
reference is returned by the new() constructor for this
class. The names of all private methods and data-fields used
by Pod::Select begin with a prefix of "_" and match the reg-
ular expression "/^_\w+$/".
SEE ALSO
Pod::Parser
AUTHOR
Please report bugs using <http://rt.cpan.org>.
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Brad Appleton <bradapp@enteract.com>
Based on code for pod2text written by Tom Christiansen
<tchrist@mox.perl.com>
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