use Pod::usage; use Getopt::Long; GetOptions("help"); =head1 SYNOPSIS here's the main usage stuff =head1 SPECIAL special usage stuff here... =cut # This prints SYNOPSIS above just fine as expected: pod2usage(-verbose => 0) if ($opt_help); # This only prints the '-message' and nothing else: pod2usage({-verbose = > 99, -sections => [qw(SPECIAL)], -message => "Here's special stuff...\n"; });