my $temp = `pod2html $file`;


##</code><code>##

  $htmlfile = $opt_outfile  if defined $opt_outfile;
    ...
   $htmlfile = "-" unless $htmlfile;	# stdout
     ...


 # open the output file
    print STDERR ">$htmlfile";
    open(HTML, ">$htmlfile")
	    || die "$0: cannot open $htmlfile file for output: $!\n";