Thanks for the clarification. I should have read your original post more thoroughtly.

I tried all my tricks to fake out &Pod::Html::pod2html, but I can't make it work without resorting to pipes.

If you wish to resort to pipes, the following Worked For Me(tm).

use strict;
use IO::File;
use IO::Pipe;
use Pod::Html qw( &pod2html );

# I only use $fh to get a pod string, It is not part
#  of the solution.
my $fh = IO::File->new("<foo.pod")
  or die "filaed to open foo.pod: $!";
$fh->input_record_separator( undef );
my ($str);
$str = $fh->getline();
$fh->close;
# Got the pod string in $str
 
my $pipe = IO::Pipe->new()
  or die "failed to create pipe: $!";
 
my ($pid,$fd);
if ( $pid = fork() )
 { #parent
 
   open(TMPSTDIN, "<&STDIN")
     or die "failed to dup stdin to tmp: $!";
 
   $pipe->reader();
 
   $fd = $pipe->fileno;
   open(STDIN, "<&=$fd")
     or die "failed to dup \$fd to STDIN: $!";
 
   pod2html();

   open(STDIN, "<&TMPSTDIN")
     or die "failed to restore dup'ed stdin: $!";
 }
else
 { #child
   $pipe->writer();
 
   $pipe->print($str);
 
   $pipe->close();
 
   exit 0;
 }

$pipe->close();
 
exit 0;
[download]

I think this will work satifactorally even on the Win32 port of Perl. Win32 doesn't really fork(), it just creates a thread. But I restore the original STDIN and the child dies pretty quickly.