Using asterisk in pod item as text

Question

I'm writing my perl documentation in POD format
my problem is, I want to have an item label simply called *

I tried =item * , =item S<*> , =item Z<>* and =item E<42>

all approaches are interpreted as bullets, but I want the asterisk interpreted as normal text
any idea, how I can generally solve this problem without adding more text like =item "*"?

I'm not sure, if this is helpful, but here is a small example (I abandoned the empty lines):

=pod
=head1 HEAD
=over 4
=item a
A
=item *
B
=item c
C
=back
=cut

I use podchecker to check my documents, before I use pod2text,pod2html,etc.
and it says =item type mismatch ('definition' vs. 'bullet')
I didn't said this in first place, because I thought every converter depends on the interpretation of the podchecker

Answer 1

okay the nicest solution I found so far is the use of =item S< >* which produces the output

HEAD
    a   A

     *  B

    c   C

not exactly what I wanted (the * is a bit off) but anyway

Answer 2

It would help if you show the exact output you are looking for and the output you are getting.

I can get the asterisk to show up in the output of perldoc as long as I make it the second =item:

=head1 OPTIONS

=over 5

=item help

Help me!

=item *

Asterisk

=back

=cut

Here is the output I get from perldoc:

OPTIONS
       help Help me!

       *    Asterisk

Here is a pertinent quote from perlpod:

And perhaps most importantly, keep the items consistent: either use "=item *" for all of them, to produce bullets; or use "=item 1.", "=item 2.", etc., to produce numbered lists; or use "=item foo", "=item bar", etc.--namely, things that look nothing like bullets or numbers.

If you start with bullets or numbers, stick with them, as formatters use the first "=item" type to decide how to format the list.

See also: Avoid inconsistent POD =over =item indentation