I was lamenting at work the other day that now that I've discovered OO and templating with PHP, the only major feature missing for me is a way to easily document my programs. I'm a big fan of perl's POD, and use it fairly extensively, even for simple scripts — it's a way to provide a quick manual without needing to worry too much about how to format it.

So, it hit me on the way home Friday night: what prevents me from using POD in multiline comments of PHP scripts? I thought I'd give it a try when I got home.

First I googled for 'POD for PHP', and found a link to perlmongers where somebody recounted seeing that exact thing done, and how nicely it worked.

Then I tried it… and it indeed worked. So, basically, I've got all the tools I love from perl in PHP, one of which is borrowed directly from the language!