Maybe the idea is a bit sick, but it was the easy way out to avoid having to parse the nesting. The approach is not common: first, I convert the POD document to a piece of code that returns a single string, in this case HTML formatted.

Comments are welcome! 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

# unfinished code, possibly insecure.


use strict;

sub AUTOLOAD  { shift };
sub pod_blank { "<p>" }
sub pod_code  { "<pre>$_[0]</pre>" }
sub pod_C     { "<tt>$_[0]</tt>" }
sub pod_I     { "<i>$_[0]</i>" }
sub pod_B     { "<b>$_[0]</b>" }
sub pod_S     { "<nobr>$_[0]</nobr>" }
sub pod_F     { "<tt>$_[0]</tt>" }
sub pod_Z     { "<span></span>" }
sub pod_L     { # XXX - needs a lot of work
    (split /\|/, shift)[0]
}
sub pod_E     {
       $_[0] =~ /^\d+$/ ? "&#$_[0];"
    :  { qw(lt < gt > sol / verbar |) }->{ $_[0] }
    || "&$_[0];"
}
sub pod_head1 { "<h1>$_[0]</h1>" }
sub pod_head2 { "<h2>$_[0]</h2>" }
sub pod_over  { "<ul>" }
sub pod_back  { "</ul>" }
sub pod_item  { "<li>$_[0]</li>" }

sub pod_PRE   {
    local $_ = shift;
    s/&/&amp;/g;
    $_;
}
sub pod_POST  {
    local $_ = shift;
    s/</&amp;lt;/g;
    s/>/&gt;/g;
    "<html><body>$_</body></html>";
}

###

my $pod = do {
    local $/ = undef;
    open my $fh, 'pod' or die $!;
    readline $fh;
};


$pod = pod_PRE($pod);

$pod =~ s/([\[\]\$\@\\])/\\$1/g;

$pod =~ s/^[^\n\S]*$/\${\\ pod_blank() }/gm;
$pod =~ s/^=(\w+)(?: ?(.*))?/\${\\ pod_$1(qq[$2]) }/gm;
$pod =~ s/^((?:[^\n\S].*\n?)+)/\${\\ pod_code(qq[$1]) }/gm;

for (2..6) {
    my $op = '<' x $_;
    my $cl = '>' x $_;
    while ($pod =~ /([IBSCLFXZE])$op (.*?) $cl/) {
        $pod =~ s//\${\\ pod_$1(qq[$2]) }/g;
    }
}
while ($pod =~ /([IBSCLFXZE])<(.*?)>/) {
    $pod =~ s//\${\\ pod_$1(qq[$2]) }/g;
}

$pod = 'qq[' . pod_POST($pod) . ']';
print eval $pod;

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- Yes, I reinvent wheels.
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In reply to pod2perl and then to html by Juerd

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
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