That's the main reason why I didn't ask for extending the spec of Z<> to be more lenient and take any text while just consuming it - the behavior of the Z<> formatting code would differ between Perl versions and that can be a real pain.

While introducing a new code is certainly an option, the only reason I see not to use Z<> is this from perlpodspec - emphasis mine: "This code is unusual in that it should have no content. That is, a processor may complain if it sees Z<potatoes>. Whether or not it complains, the potatoes text should ignored." I think allowing Z<> to be more lenient could also be an alternative.

I should probably change the perldoc/perldocspec documentation to add this as a recommendation.

I agree that this is worth a mention.

To be honest, I avoid the perldoc command like the plague.

I should have been more specific: I use perldoc when I'm on the command line. I very much prefer HTML documentation over the command line.