Sams Teach Yourself Perl in 21 Days, Second Edition

Using Perl Modules

Half of learning how to script Perl successfully is knowing how to write the code. The other half is knowing when NOT to write the code. Or, to be more exact, knowing when to take advantage of the built-in Perl functions or when to use libraries and modules that other people have written to make your programming life easier.

If you've got a given task to do in Perl that sounds kind of complex but that might also be something other programmers might have done in the past, chances are really good that someone else has beaten you to it. And, in the Perl tradition, he may very well have packaged their code in a module or a library and made it available for public downloading. If it's a really common task, that module might even ...