

Why I Use Perl...and Will Continue to Do So - fuzzix
http://www.drdobbs.com/open-source/why-i-use-perland-will-continue-to-do-so/240148364

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crazydiamond
Thanks. I have been looking for a list of top downloads for perl modules (at
CPAN or anywhere else). Do you know of such a list ?

I moved from awk to perl (for my scripting) around 2000, while using Java at
work. However, I moved to ruby in 2004. I remember finding perl's @array and
$array[n] being quite irksome. Anyway, I am thinking of revisiting perl for
large shell-script apps, and I'd like to know of the most popular modules. (my
work is command line/shell related, not web/Rails).

Do you have any template for your perl apps you can share. Have you put any
apps up on github ?

~~~
fuzzix
You could check out the weekly cpan ratings[0] for "popular" modules, though I
find the best appraoch is to search cpan for modules as I need them.

CPAN Modules themselves often serve as a decent template for the form and
structure of a Perl application and tests, see the App:: space for standalone
applications (e.g. App::cpanminus).

If you're returning to Perl (or just starting out) you can do worse than check
out Beginning Perl[1] and Modern Perl[2].

There are also Perl distributions such as DWIM Perl[3] which bundle Perl and
the most commonly used modules.

[0] <http://niceperl.blogspot.co.il/search/label/cpan>

[1] <http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9781118013847/>

[2] <http://www.onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/index.html>

[3] <http://dwimperl.com/>

~~~
crazydiamond
Thanks. Seems dwim is more for web apps or servers. And its pretty new. I have
downloaded Modern Perl recently and do have a lot of books on perl bought (and
read) in the early 2000's.

I am wary of generally downloading modules from CPAN since I have already
earlier found some to be broken, or have dependencies that are abandoned.
Which is why I sort of look for a curated list that is likely to be
maintained. I;ve had the same issues with ruby and other languages as well,
and am careful of what I depend on. Currently, I've been bitten by ruby's
unicode issues (string functions crashing out of the blue in 1.9) and am thus
considering going back to perl.

~~~
draegtun
A good way to find out if there are issues with a CPAN module is to look at
the _Test results_ provided by the CPANtesters smoke testing.

For eg. on TryCatch (<https://metacpan.org/module/TryCatch>) it currently
shows... _Test results (1933 / 172 / 1)_

This means its tests have passed on 1933 different test machines (on various
different versions of Perl & OS's). However there have been 172 machines
reporting a problem. Clicking on the _Test results_ link delves down deeper -
[http://www.cpantesters.org/distro/T/TryCatch.html#TryCatch-1...](http://www.cpantesters.org/distro/T/TryCatch.html#TryCatch-1.003000)

From this I can see there are a lot of failures with this (version of the)
module recently. So there is a new problem that's manifested itself recently
in a small number of tests -
[http://www.cpantesters.org/cpan/report/42fb1e6c-749d-11e2-8c...](http://www.cpantesters.org/cpan/report/42fb1e6c-749d-11e2-8c23-9ffbde4da9a6)

Looking at the test failure (it failed 6 out of 58 tests) I think it was fine
to just force installation for now. The module owner will receive an email for
everyone of these 172 smoke test failures so I doubt it will be long before
he/she fixes this _problem_ :)

