NAME
Pod::Spell - a formatter for spellchecking Pod
VERSION
version 1.20
SYNOPSIS
use Pod::Spell;
Pod::Spell->new->parse_from_file( 'File.pm' );
Pod::Spell->new->parse_from_filehandle( $infile, $outfile );
Also look at podspell
% perl -MPod::Spell -e "Pod::Spell->new->parse_from_file(shift)" Thing.pm |spell |fmt
...or instead of piping to spell or ispell, use >temp.txt, and open
temp.txt in your word processor for spell-checking.
DESCRIPTION
Pod::Spell is a Pod formatter whose output is good for spellchecking.
Pod::Spell rather like Pod::Text, except that it doesn't put much
effort into actual formatting, and it suppresses things that look like
Perl symbols or Perl jargon (so that your spellchecking program won't
complain about mystery words like "$thing" or "Foo::Bar" or "hashref").
This class provides no new public methods. All methods of interest are
inherited from Pod::Parser (which see). The especially interesting ones
are parse_from_filehandle (which without arguments takes from STDIN and
sends to STDOUT) and parse_from_file. But you can probably just make do
with the examples in the synopsis though.
This class works by filtering out words that look like Perl or any form
of computerese (like "$thing" or "N>7" or "@{$foo}{'bar','baz'}",
anything in C<...> or F<...> codes, anything in verbatim paragraphs
(code blocks), and anything in the stopword list. The default stopword
list for a document starts out from the stopword list defined by
Pod::Wordlist, and can be supplemented (on a per-document basis) by
having "=for stopwords" / "=for :stopwords" region(s) in a document.
METHODS
new
stopwords
$self->stopwords->isa('Pod::WordList'); # true
parse_from_filehandle($in_fh,$out_fh)
This method takes an input filehandle (which is assumed to already be
opened for reading) and reads the entire input stream looking for
blocks (paragraphs) of POD documentation to be processed. If no first
argument is given the default input filehandle STDIN is used.
The $in_fh parameter may be any object that provides a getline() method
to retrieve a single line of input text (hence, an appropriate wrapper
object could be used to parse PODs from a single string or an array of
strings).
parse_from_file($filename,$outfile)
This method takes a filename and does the following:
* opens the input and output files for reading (creating the
appropriate filehandles)
* invokes the parse_from_filehandle() method passing it the
corresponding input and output filehandles.
* closes the input and output files.
If the special input filename "", "-" or "<&STDIN" is given then the
STDIN filehandle is used for input (and no open or close is performed).
If no input filename is specified then "-" is implied. Filehandle
references, or objects that support the regular IO operations (like
<$fh> or $fh-<Egtgetline>) are also accepted; the handles must already
be opened.
If a second argument is given then it should be the name of the desired
output file. If the special output filename "-" or ">&STDOUT" is given
then the STDOUT filehandle is used for output (and no open or close is
performed). If the special output filename ">&STDERR" is given then the
STDERR filehandle is used for output (and no open or close is
performed). If no output filehandle is currently in use and no output
filename is specified, then "-" is implied. Alternatively, filehandle
references or objects that support the regular IO operations (like
print, e.g. IO::String) are also accepted; the object must already be
opened.
ENCODINGS
Pod::Parser, which Pod::Spell extends, is extremely naive about
character encodings. The parse_from_file method does not apply any
PerlIO encoding layer. If your Pod file is encoded in UTF-8, your data
will be read incorrectly.
You should instead use parse_from_filehandle and manage the input and
output layers yourself.
binmode($_, ":utf8") for ($infile, $outfile);
$my ps = Pod::Spell->new;
$ps->parse_from_filehandle( $infile, $outfile );
If your output destination cannot handle UTF-8, you should set your
output handle to Latin-1 and tell Pod::Spell to strip out words with
wide characters.
binmode($infile, ":utf8");
binmode($outfile, ":encoding(latin1)");
$my ps = Pod::Spell->new( no_wide_chars => 1 );
$ps->parse_from_filehandle( $infile, $outfile );
ADDING STOPWORDS
You can add stopwords on a per-document basis with "=for stopwords" /
"=for :stopwords" regions, like so:
=for stopwords plok Pringe zorch snik !qux
foo bar baz quux quuux
This adds every word in that paragraph after "stopwords" to the
stopword list, effective for the rest of the document. In such a list,
words are whitespace-separated. (The amount of whitespace doesn't
matter, as long as there's no blank lines in the middle of the
paragraph.) Plural forms are added automatically using
Lingua::EN::Inflect. Words beginning with "!" are deleted from the
stopword list -- so "!qux" deletes "qux" from the stopword list, if it
was in there in the first place. Note that if a stopword is
all-lowercase, then it means that it's okay in any case; but if the
word has any capital letters, then it means that it's okay only with
that case. So a Wordlist entry of "perl" would permit "perl", "Perl",
and (less interestingly) "PERL", "pERL", "PerL", et cetera. However, a
Wordlist entry of "Perl" catches only "Perl", not "perl". So if you
wanted to make sure you said only "Perl", never "perl", you could add
this to the top of your document:
=for stopwords !perl Perl
Then all instances of the word "Perl" would be weeded out of the
Pod::Spell-formatted version of your document, but any instances of the
word "perl" would be left in (unless they were in a C<...> or F<...>
style).
You can have several "=for stopwords" regions in your document. You can
even express them like so:
=begin stopwords
plok Pringe zorch
snik !qux
foo bar
baz quux quuux
=end stopwords
If you want to use E<...> sequences in a "stopwords" region, you have
to use ":stopwords", as here:
=for :stopwords
virtE<ugrave>
...meaning that you're adding a stopword of "virtù". If you left the
":" out, that would mean you were adding a stopword of "virtE<ugrave>"
(with a literal E, a literal <, etc), which will have no effect, since
any occurrences of virtE<ugrave> don't look like a normal
human-language word anyway, and so would be screened out before the
stopword list is consulted anyway.
BUGS AND LIMITATIONS
finding stopwords defined with =for
Pod::Spell makes a single pass over the POD. Stopwords must be added
before they show up in the POD.
finding the wordlist
Pod::Spell uses File::ShareDir::ProjectDistDir if you're getting errors
about the wordlist being missing, chances are it's a problem with its
heuristics. Set PATH_ISDEV_DEBUG=1 or PATH_FINDDEV_DEBUG=1, or both in
your environment for debugging, and then file a bug with
File::ShareDir::ProjectDistDir if necessary.
HINT
If you feed output of Pod::Spell into your word processor and run a
spell-check, make sure you're not also running a grammar-check --
because Pod::Spell drops words that it thinks are Perl symbols, jargon,
or stopwords, this means you'll have ungrammatical sentences, what with
words being missing and all. And you don't need a grammar checker to
tell you that.
SEE ALSO
Pod::Wordlist
Pod::Parser
podchecker also known as Pod::Checker
perlpod, perlpodspec
CONTRIBUTORS
* David Golden <dagolden@cpan.org>
* Kent Fredric <kentfredric@gmail.com>
* Mohammad S Anwar <mohammad.anwar@yahoo.com>
* Olivier Mengué <dolmen@cpan.org>
* Paulo Custodio <pauloscustodio@gmail.com>
AUTHORS
* Sean M. Burke <sburke@cpan.org>
* Caleb Cushing <xenoterracide@gmail.com>
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
This software is Copyright (c) 2016 by Olivier Mengué.
This is free software, licensed under:
The Artistic License 2.0 (GPL Compatible)