G'day jimw54321,

I have Perl v5.18.1 (I can't see any mention of changes to "perldoc" or "POD" in the latest, v5.18.2, perldelta). I have version 3.19 of Pod::Perldoc ("The guts of perldoc utility."). I'm on a completely different platform to you (Mac OS X): keep this in mind when reading the following.

I used to have a variety of problems with perldoc output which I fixed, after much trial and error, simply by adding this to my ~/.bash_profile (the equivalent on your OS may be ~/.profile [it's been quite a few years since I last worked on Solaris]):

PAGER="/usr/bin/less -R"
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This version of less seems to have the same options as me, check that -R means the same on your platform. Other options that may be worth trying are -r (which is similar to -R) and -s (to squeeze multiple, consecutive blank lines into one) which seems directly applicable to the problem you describe.

I don't have PERLDOC_PAGER or MANPAGER set. See perldoc - ENVIRONMENT for more information on pager settings and other less options.

In case it helps, here's my terminal characteristics (in the spoiler):

$ stty -a
speed 9600 baud; 80 rows; 121 columns;
lflags: icanon isig iexten echo echoe -echok echoke -echonl echoctl
    -echoprt -altwerase -noflsh -tostop -flusho pendin -nokerninfo
    -extproc
iflags: -istrip icrnl -inlcr -igncr ixon -ixoff ixany imaxbel iutf8
    -ignbrk brkint -inpck -ignpar -parmrk
oflags: opost onlcr -oxtabs -onocr -onlret
cflags: cread cs8 -parenb -parodd hupcl -clocal -cstopb -crtscts -dsrf
+low
    -dtrflow -mdmbuf
cchars: discard = ^O; dsusp = ^Y; eof = ^D; eol = <undef>;
    eol2 = <undef>; erase = ^?; intr = ^C; kill = ^U; lnext = ^V;
    min = 1; quit = ^\; reprint = ^R; start = ^Q; status = ^T;
    stop = ^S; susp = ^Z; time = 0; werase = ^W;
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