The ideal ordering of the methods/functions in the code is not always the same as the ideal ordering within the documentation.

This! You may want to group the functions together in one way in the module, but prefer to structure the POD in a different way. This approach is easy when the POD's contained in a separate file from the code.

.. my experience is that if the documentation is not next to the code, people are much less likely to read the documentation when looking at the code ..

Mmm, that's a matter of opinion. The POD should contain enough information for someone using the module to write code that uses it. If they also have to look at the code, that's a problem with the POD. I can think of a number of modules that I've used where I've never looked at the code, but have re-read the POD lots of times.

.. and much less likely to update the documentation when changing the code.

It would be poor software craftsmanship to update the code without updating the POD. I would expect a PR that improves/alters the code for a module would include code, documentation, and some information about what the goal of the change is. And in the Perl world, backwards compatibility is really, really important.

---

---

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! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

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:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.