Thanks. It seems the behaviour is intended but undocumented! Just above the comments in the source code that you quoted is a regex test that is looking for certain specific things in brackets. One of the things it looks for - six lines above your comment - is nothing. So in the POD I am giving it, it sees a function name followed by nothing in brackets and that matches this regex. Therefore, like Bill Gates, it knows best. I can't see any options that refer to this and it seems that the only way to change the behaviour is to change the code. The smallest amount of work, since I want this to work on any machine, is to change my code. I have code that writes POD, and changing this to include s/()/(Z<>)/g is not too challenging. I think all I have to do is work out which of those characters need escaping.

Regards,

John Davies

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