A more readable, and perhaps more "plain" way is to use an alternate
set of delimiters that doesn't require a single ">" to be escaped. With
-the Pod formatters that are standard starting with perl5.5.660, doubled
-angle brackets ("<<" and ">>") may be used I<if and only if there is
+the Pod formatters that are standard starting with perl5.5.660 (circa 2000),
+doubled angle brackets ("<<" and ">>") may be used I<if and only if there is
whitespace right after the opening delimiter and whitespace right
before the closing delimiter!> For example, the following will
do the trick:
C<$a E<lt>=E<gt> $b>
+The multiple-bracket form does not affect the interpretation of the contents of
+the formatting code, only how it must end. That means that the examples above
+are also exactly the same as this:
+
+ C<< $a E<lt>=E<gt> $b >>
+
As a further example, this means that if you wanted to put these bits of
code in C<C> (code) style:
and so on.
+Finally, the multiple-angle-bracket form does I<not> alter the interpretation
+of nested formatting codes, meaning that the following four example lines are
+identical in meaning:
+
+ B<example: C<$a E<lt>=E<gt> $b>>
+
+ B<example: C<< $a <=> $b >>>
+
+ B<example: C<< $a E<lt>=E<gt> $b >>>
+
+ B<<< example: C<< $a E<lt>=E<gt> $b >> >>>
+
=back
In parsing Pod, a notably tricky part is the correct parsing of