protect special characters better against interpretation by *roff

(from Russ Allbery)

p4raw-id: //depot/perl@5737

diff --git a/lib/Pod/Man.pm b/lib/Pod/Man.pm
index 898b544..3ba26a3 100644 (file)
--- a/lib/Pod/Man.pm
+++ b/lib/Pod/Man.pm
@@ -264,13 +264,13 @@ $PREAMBLE = <<'----END OF PREAMBLE----';
 # Static helper functions
 ############################################################################
 
-# Protect leading quotes and periods against interpretation as commands.  A
-# leading *roff font escape apparently still leaves a period interpretable
-# as a command by some *roff implementations, so look for a period even
-# after one of those.
+# Protect leading quotes and periods against interpretation as commands.
+# Also protect anything starting with a backslash, since it could expand
+# or hide something that *roff would interpret as a command.  This is
+# overkill, but it's much simpler than trying to parse *roff here.
 sub protect {
     local $_ = shift;
-    s{ ^ ( (?: \\f(?:.|\(..) )* [.\'] ) } {\\&$1}xmg;
+    s/^([.\'\\])/\\&$1/mg;
     $_;
 }