The Perl Toolchain Summit needs more sponsors. If your company depends on Perl, please support this very important event.

NAME

Perl::Critic::Policy::Documentation::ProhibitBadAproposMarkup - don't use C<> markup in a NAME section

DESCRIPTION

This policy is part of the Perl::Critic::Pulp add-on. It asks you not to write C<> markup in the NAME section of the POD because it comes out badly in the man-db "apropos" database. For example,

    =head1 NAME

    foo - like the C<bar> program     # bad

pod2man formats "C<>" using nroff macros which "man-db"'s lexgrog program doesn't expand, resulting in unattractive description lines from apropos like

    foo - like the *(C`bar*(C' program

Man's actual formatted output is fine, and the desired text is in there, just surrounded by *(C bits. On that basis this policy is low severity and under the "cosmetic" theme (see "POLICY THEMES" in Perl::Critic).

The NAME section is everything from =head1 NAME to the next =head1. Other markup like "B<>", "I<>" and "F<>" is allowed because pod2man uses builtin \fB etc directives for them, which lexgrog recognises.

=begin :man and =begin :roff blocks are checked since Pod::Man processes those. Other =begin blocks are ignored as they won't appear in the roff output.

Disabling

If want markup in the NAME line, perhaps if printed output is more important than apropos, then you can always disable from your .perlcriticrc in the usual way (see "CONFIGURATION" in Perl::Critic),

    [-Documentation::ProhibitBadAproposMarkup]

Or in an individual file with the usual ## no critic

    ## no critic (ProhibitBadAproposMarkup)

though if the NAME part is after an __END__ token then Perl::Critic 1.112 or higher is required (and the annotation must be before the __END__).

SEE ALSO

Perl::Critic::Pulp, Perl::Critic, Perl::Critic::Policy::Documentation::RequirePackageMatchesPodName, Perl::Critic::Policy::Documentation::RequirePodSections, Perl::Critic::Policy::Documentation::ProhibitVerbatimMarkup

man(1), apropos(1), lexgrog(1)

HOME PAGE

http://user42.tuxfamily.org/perl-critic-pulp/index.html

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2021 Kevin Ryde

Perl-Critic-Pulp is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option) any later version.

Perl-Critic-Pulp is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Perl-Critic-Pulp. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.