Updated on November 7 2004

Updated on Mon, 25 Apr 2005 UTC: added url for netselect

#!/usr/bin/env perl
# "dumpcpanurls" - list the mirrors CPAN.pm is configured to try
$\=qq{\n};
use CPAN ;
CPAN::Config->load ;
print join qq{\n}, @{$CPAN::Config->{'urllist'}} ;
[download]

Same thing as a one-liner (*nix or MSwindoze):

perl -MCPAN -le "CPAN::Config->load; print join qq(\n)=> @{ \$CPAN::Co
+nfig->{urllist} }"
#                                                remove this^ escape f
+or windows shell
[download]

As a further (obvious) tip, note that this list can then be used as input into a pipeline, say to the ping(1) command, i.e.:

dumpcpanurls | perl -le 'do{s#^\w+p://([^/]+).*#$1#;print} for(<STDIN>
+)' \
  | xargs --max-args 1 ping -c 2
[download]

dumpcpanurls | perl -le 'do{s#^\w+p://([^/]+).*#$1#;print} for(<STDIN>
+)' \
  | xargs netselect -vv
[download]

perl -MCPAN -le \
      'CPAN::Config->load;
       system "netselect", "-vv",
          map { s#^\w+p://([^/]+).*#$1# && $_ || ""}
                      @{ $CPAN::Config->{urllist} } '
[download]

     perl -MCPAN -le \
     'CPAN::Config->load;
      my @hosts;
      for (@{ $CPAN::Config->{urllist} }) {
         s#^\w+p://([^/]+).*#$1# &&
           push @hosts => $_          }
      system("netselect", "-vv", @hosts) if @hosts'
[download]

It's Perl. TMTOWTDI :-)

Finding out that the first host in the list is down before running CPAN can be a Good Thing. Finding out which mirror seems fastest is also nice. ;-)