You can't do it this simply. Although a pod directive starts at the beginning of a line with an =, that has to happen when Perl isn't expecting something else. (Curiously, BBEdit gets this wrong too).

# this isn't pod
$time

=time

;
[download]

$string =<<"HERE";

=value

=item

HERE
[download]

You can can't just look for a particular pod directive (such as =pod, in the original post, because it might not show up. Indeed, I have rarely used =pod.

There are plenty of Pod modules, so use those instead of rolling your own. :)