Appendix D. Recommended Modules and Utilities

Recommended Core Modules

Module name

Description

In core since

base

Specifies the base classes of the current package at compile time (see Chapter 16)

5.005

Benchmark

Provides utilities to time fragments of Perl code (see Chapter 19)

5.003

Carp

Provides subroutines that warn or throw exceptions, reporting the problem from the caller's location (see Chapter 13)

5.6

charnames

Enables the use of character names via \N{CHARNAME} string literal escapes (see Chapter 4)

5.6

CPAN

Simplifies the downloading and installation of CPAN modules

5.004

Data::Dumper

Converts data structures into string representations of Perl code (see Chapters Chapter 15, Chapter 17, and Chapter 18)

5.005

Devel::DProf

Profiles Perl code (see Chapter 19)

5.6

English

Defines readable English names for special variables (see Chapter 5)

5.003

Fatal

Replaces functions and subroutines with equivalents that either succeed or throw an exception (see Chapter 13)

5.005

File::Glob

Implements command-line filename globbing (see Chapter 8)

5.6

File::Temp

Provides a safe and efficient way to create temporary files (see Chapter 17)

5.6

Getopt::Long

Parses command-line options (see Chapter 14)

5.003

IO::File

Creates I/O objects connected to files (see Chapter 10)

5.004

IO::Handle

Acts as the base class for filehandles and objects (see Chapter 5)

5.004

List::Util

Provides additional list-processing utilities missing from the core language (see Chapters Chapter 2 and 8)

5.8

Memoize

Optimizes subroutines by caching ...

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