=item * foo bar

[Karl Williamson]

There is code in Pod::Simple that "tolerates" (meaning accepts as a
bullet item) this pod line that would normally be illegal by perlpodspec.

I wonder if anyone is around who remembers why this was added. I didn't
see details in an internet search

[Russ Allbery]

Pod::Man tolerated this prior to Pod::Simple (by removing the leading
bullet and, if this was the first =item in an =over block, treating it as
a declaration that the type would be bullet).

Looks like that behavior was there from the very first version of my
Pod::Man in 1999, so I suspect it was in Tom Christiansen's original
pod2man script.

So, the short answer is "very, very, very long-standing backward
compatibility."

--
#!/usr/bin/perl -- Russ Allbery, Just Another Perl Hacker
$^=q;@!>~|{>krw>yn{u<$$<[~||<Juukn{=,<S~|}<Jwx}qn{<Yn{u<Qjltn{ > 0gFzD gD,
00Fz, 0,,( 0hF 0g)F/=, 0> "L$/GEIFewe{,$/ 0C$~> "@=,m,|,(e 0.), 01,pnn,y{
rw} >;,$0=q,$,,($_=$^)=~y,$/ C-~><@=\n\r,-~$:-u/ #y,d,s,(\$.),$1,gee,print