CPAN won't install a module if it's not compatible with your perl version. If the module requires 5.10.1, it'll tell you and stop. What's more important to me is the minimum version of perl. For example, Perl::MinimumVersion requires a minimum of 5.006, so you can check it like this:

#!/usr/bin/perl -l

use strict;
use warnings;
use Perl::MinimumVersion;

my $obj = Perl::MinimumVersion->new(
    "/usr/local/share/perl5/Perl/MinimumVersion.pm",
);
print $obj->minimum_version;
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Unfortunately, it only works with files on your disk: files, scripts, code, modules, etc.