[prog] Perl advice

[Jacinta Richardson]

Cynthia Kiser wrote:
> Quoting Kathryn Andersen <kat_lists at katspace.homelinux.org>:
> 
>>Always check on CPAN to see if there's a module that's already been
>>written which does what you want.
> 
> 
> Is there a rating system for CPAN modules? My problem generally isn't
> a lack of modules to do the stuff I want to do - but that there are a
> number of similar looking ones and I don't have enough experience to
> know before spending several hours on a new toy whether or not it is
> going to work. 

Yes there is.  When browsing CPAN, go to the module's homepage (so to speak) 
rather than just the documentation.  For example, if you do a search for XML and 
then click on XML::Simple you'll get the documentation page:

http://search.cpan.org/~grantm/XML-Simple-2.14/lib/XML/Simple.pm

Up the top of the page you'll see a bar containing:

Grant McLean >  XML-Simple-2.14 >  XML::Simple

Click on the distribution (XML-Simple-2.14) and you'll go to the distribution 
homepage.  On this page should be a rating (5 stars for this module) and an idea 
of how many people have rated it (6).  You can then read their reviews if you 
want, or add your own rating.

Ratings are still fairly new so lots of good modules may exist which haven't 
been rated.  You can help by reporting your experiences with them.

All the best,

      Jacinta

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