Re: =item * foo bar

Karl Williamson <[email protected]> writes:

> There is code in Pod::Simple that "tolerates" (meaning accepts as a
> bullet item) this pod line that would normally be illegal by
> perlpodspec.

> I wonder if anyone is around who remembers why this was added.  I didn't
> see details in an internet search

Pod::Man tolerated this prior to Pod::Simple (by removing the leading
bullet and, if this was the first =item in an =over block, treating it as
a declaration that the type would be bullet).

Looks like that behavior was there from the very first version of my
Pod::Man in 1999, so I suspect it was in Tom Christiansen's original
pod2man script.

So, the short answer is "very, very, very long-standing backward
compatibility."

-- 
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