How do I use Unicode characters in Pod and perldoc?

Question

I need to use utf-8 characters in my perl-documentation. If I use:

perldoc MyMod.pm

I see strange characters. If I use:

pod2text MyMod.pm

everything is fine.

I use Ubuntu/Debian.

$ locale
LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=de_DE.UTF-8

Is there a HowTo about using special characters in Pod?

Here is a small example using german umlauts "Just a Test: äöüßÄÖ":

$ perldoc perl/MyMod.pm
<standard input>:72: warning: can't find character with input code 159
<standard input>:72: warning: can't find character with input code 150
MyMod(3)              User Contributed Perl Documentation             MyMod(3)

NAME
        MyMod.pm - Just a Test: Ã¤Ã¶Ã¼ÃÃÃ

perl v5.10.0                      2008-10-16                          MyMod(3)

What kind of strange characters? Question marks? Boxes? Weird ANSI formatting codes? — 1800 INFORMATION, Oct 16 '08 at 09:10

score 19 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 16 '08 at 14:04

19

Use =encoding utf-8 as the first POD directive in your file, and use a fairly recent perldoc (for example from 5.10-maint). Then it should work.

answered Oct 16 '08 at 14:04

moritz

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this answer seems to be correct. thank you. i found more details in "perldoc perlpod". – maletin Oct 17 '08 at 19:34
The doc indicates "=encoding utf8" rather than "=encoding utf-8". But with 5.18 on Ubuntu it seems unnecessary, and in 5.16 on Mac OS X 10.10.4 neither seems to work. – TextGeek Aug 27 '15 at 16:46

score 6 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 21 '17 at 15:03

6

Found this RT ticket.... http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=39000

This "bug" seems to be introduced with Perl 5.10 and perhaps this pod2man --utf8 needs to be used.

edited Apr 21 '17 at 15:03

AndyG

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answered Oct 16 '08 at 10:32

draegtun

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 17 '17 at 08:38

0

perldoc -t MyMod.pm

From the perldoc manual:

-t Display pod using pod2text instead of Pod::Man and groff (-t is the default on win32 unless -n is specified)

answered May 17 '17 at 08:38

user8024242

1

How do I use Unicode characters in Pod and perldoc?

3 Answers3

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