Usual startup operations

Now could be a good time to display a copyright message if you like.

    # display copyright unless suppressed

Help requests can be fulfilled very quickly, because they do not need further operations.

    # check for a help request
  
    (exec("pod2text $0 | less") or die "[Fatal] exec() cannot be called: $!n") if $options{help};

After presenting the manpage, the converter stops. It also terminates in case of a wrong usage, especially missing document sources.

    # check usage
  
    die "[Fatal] Usage: $0 [<options>] <PerlPoint source(s)>n" unless @ARGV>=1;
  
    # check passed sources
  
    -r or die "[Fatal] Source file $_ does not exist or is unreadable.n" foreach @ARGV;