[Purdue-pm] interpolate perl variables in pod

[Rick Westerman]

Mark's links, especially 

http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=515663

were ones that I had already read and were the ones that gave me the idea to extract variables from POD.

I think that we all agree that POD is outdated -- a different document engine within Perl would be nice.  And we probably all agree that a two-step method -- compile'n'run or pro'n'latex or POD-preprocessor -- would provide for a more powerful solution albeit at the cost of having two or more files for every program.  However what I am trying to show is a neat POD hack within the confines of what is universal -- POD inside the single executable file. 



----- Original Message -----
> Another followup to Rick's message about sharing Perl
> variable values in Perl and POD.
> 
> From http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=714673
> 
> As JavaFan and GrandFather have already mentioned, no, you can't
> directly. However, there's nothing to stop you from generating a POD
> document from a perl script:
> 
> open (my $pod, '>', 'filename.pod') or die "Can't write pod file: $!";
> my $my_perl_variable = 'something';
> print $pod <<EOF;
> =head1 Imaginary Interpolation
> This was defined previously: C<$my_perl_variable>
> =cut
> EOF
> 
> Of course, this would mean that you'd have to trigger the re-writing
> process somehow ... if you were to give an interface for updating
> whatever your variables were, you could regenerate the pod
> afterwards. I personally couldn't see the advantage of doing this,
> but I don't know what your full intentions are.
> 
> http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=714673 links to
> http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=515663
> which has some more ideas.
> 
> http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=714673 also links to
> http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=48645
> which didn't contain much usefil information in my opinion.
> 
> (Or, maybe just replace, for example ---VERSION---, in
> a program.pl-replace file with sed to make a program.pl file.
> This has the advantage if you want to sync version numbers
> on multiple programs and/or docs without making any file changes.
> I used this type of thing for a project I did years ago
> and it worked out prettty well.)
> 
> -mark

-- 
Rick Westerman 
westerman at purdue.edu

Bioinformatics specialist at the Genomics Facility.
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