Perl Hacks

Hack #39. Search CPAN Modules Locally

Search the CPAN without leaving the command line.

Websites such as http://search.cpan.org/ are fantastic for finding the Perl module you need from the CPAN, but firing up a web browser, navigating to the page, and waiting for the results can be slow.

Similarly, running the CPAN or CPANPLUS shell and doing i search term is also slow. Besides that, you might not even have a network connection.

The Hack

The last time the CPAN or CPANPLUS shell connected to a CPAN mirror it downloaded a file listing every single module—03modlist.data.gz. You can see the file at ftp://cpan.org/modules/03modlist.data.gz. Because you have that local copy, you can parse it, check the modules that match your search terms, and print the results.

Additionally you can check to see if any of them are installed already and highlight them.

#!perl -w # import merrily use strict; use IO::Zlib; use Parse::CPAN::Modlist; # get the search pattern my $pattern = shift || die "You must pass a pattern\\n"; my $pattern_re = qr/$pattern/; # munge our name my $self = $0; $self =~ s!^.*[\\\\/]!!; # naughty user die ("usage : $self <query>\\n") unless defined $pattern; # get where the local modulelist is from CPAN(PLUS?)::Config my $base; eval { require CPANPLUS::Config; CPANPLUS::Config->import( ); }; unless ($@) { my $conf = CPANPLUS::Config->new( ); # different versions have the config in different places for (qw(conf _build)) { $base = $conf->{$_}->{base} if exists $conf->{$_}; } } goto ...