A very simple little script that is missing from perl is
pod2text.  It should exist as pod2html and co exist.  This
little script is required to build Mysql DBI modules so I
assume that it is a standard part of the perl distribution.
You can write your own pod2text by saving the following
script in /usr/bin/pod2text:

#!/usr/bin/perl
    eval 'exec /usr/bin/perl -S $0 ${1+"$@"}'
	if $running_under_some_shell;

use Pod::Text;

pod2text @ARGV;