"Your post reminded me of a problem which I have been trying to solve involving extracting URL's pointing to a specific filetype (say a gz archive) from a web page. It turns out that at CPAN there is a page which contains an alphabetical list of all modules, with a hyperlink to the tar.gz file of each module. "

Back on the subject after a long break!

Unfortunately, the repository for use by 'ppm' requires a layer above the '.tar.gz' files - a directory of '.ppd' files which describe the packages.

Therefore I have to create this structure locally to have a local repository.

I haven't yet found a simpler way than downloading the '.zip' files each of which which contains a '.ppd' file plus a '.tar.gz' file with a subsidiary path name.

Thanks for the code, though - it could form a basis for downloading all the '.zip' files from the ActiveState website.

This would in turn allow the creation of an 'all_in_one' utility to download all the '.zip' files from the website, unpack them into the repository, and create the 'package.lst' file.

The local repository could then be copied to CD and distributed as an off-line 'ppm' repository.

Cheers

Dave R