Re: pod bugs

[Tom Christiansen <tchrist@chthon.perl.com>]

>It was definitely supposed to be /^\s*$/ ('*' and not '+') because
>that is what actually appears in the code; and the term "blank line"
>from the perlpod(1) pages is apparently open to interpretation (some
>regard a "blank line" as different from an "empty line" as different
>from who knows what else).

Only if you want a wrong interpretation. :-)

Pod is paragraph-based.  Perl, emboddied its notion of what $/=''
means, considers a paragraph to be a chunk of text that ends with
two or more consecutive newlines.  Putting something between those
newlines renders it no longer the end of the paragraph.

Yes, I know this is idiot-prone.   Idiots screw it up all the time.
But that's what $/='' means, and that's what a paragraph means in
Perl.  You don't think _ goes in English words just because in Perl,
\w includes _.  Likewise, Perl has its own persnickety notion of
"paragraph".  Anywhere that Perl documentation talks about paragraphs,
this is what it means.

You might not like it.  You might suggest changing it.  But this *is*
what it means.

--tom

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Follow-Ups from:

Peter Wolfe <wolfe@telostech.com>
Ilya Zakharevich <ilya@math.ohio-state.edu>

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