Hello Benjamin,

You are correct: CPAN looks for the newest version unless told otherwise. However, before going into your actual question, a few hints:

• File::Basename is part of the Perl distribution, so it should not be necessary to install it from CPAN.
• If you need a Perl module corresponding to your Perl version, you can also check whether it is available as a package from the Cent5 repository.
• Quite often, the current version of a module from CPAN will work just fine with Perl 5.8.8. You can just try: If it doesn't, you should get an error message during the installation.

Should you ever need to install an older version from CPAN, there's a recipe on https://www.perl.com/article/4/2013/3/27/How-to-install-a-specific-version-of-a-Perl-module-with-CPAN/.