Perhaps my meditation was not clear enough. I am not seeking wisdom on how to search for a module. I am asking about a way to help someone find what they are "really" looking for. For example, I went to search.cpan.org just now and did a search for 'database' and DBI did NOT come back in the results. That seems a little odd to me. I kept everything on the default for the test.
So then I did these two just for fun.
'attachment' - I was thinking email. Even when I changed to documentation search, 'MIME::Lite' didn't show up. It occurs 12 times in the documentation I have.
'subject' - No modules related to mail at all.
The feature I have in mind will not be all encompassing at any point, but there must be some way to help steer people in the right direction. This helps advocate Perl. The easier it is to find the tool to get something done the more people want to use it. Some people only have a small problem and may only work on one off scripts and don't have an in-depth knowledge of the particular technology involved behind the scenes nor do they need to.
I find it similar to making a person know how an internal combustion engine works before they can drive or have a conversation about an engine. They can have a conversation about where the engine and what its basic function is, but they need a little help if they want to solve a problem with it. Lets say they want the car to go faster, so now this person comes to CPAN and types in engine. They would get a list of modules matching engine and at the bottom a list of keywords that might help them in your quest. Say for example 'intake manifold', 'camshaft' etc. This would help them refine what they really need.
Some people just want/need a quick solution to a problem. I don't think they should be penalized for not knowing the (termi|tech)nology or worse still a poorly named or categorized module.
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Maybe you want to try
the WAIT
engine. Trying just 'attachment' in the text query shows Mime-tools
at number 5 and Mime::Lite at number 16. A search for 'database'
returns the DBI module amongst a host of other database related
modules in the first 40 hits. The term 'subject' is so general that I
wouldn't expect to get any "meaningful" results from any engine. Both
search.cpan.org and kobesearch.cpan.org mention (somewhere on each
site) the WAIT engine as well as each other.
As for search.cpan.org, I went and tried 'database' in a
documentation seach and DBI came up (along with hundreds of related
database modules). It didn't show up in kobesearch.cpan.org
(searching on module name or description) presumably because it is
below the 100-result limit (alphabetically speaking). Nonetheless, a
large number of these do mention the DBI module (right in their
NAME-field, shown with the search results), so it is unlikely that even
a superficial investigation into 'database' modules wouldn't turn up
the DBI module rather quickly.
The short answer is: there are a few cpan search engines out there
that do things slightly differently --- it is unlikely that there
will be one that satisfies everyone's needs. That's pretty much the
long answer too.
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I think that having each author provide a set of keywords to their CPAN module (very much like researchers provide for the articles they submit to journals) and having search.cpan.org have access to these would probably solve your problem. As it is, I would find such a tool useful. The only caveat would be that you would have to trust that the author of the module would provide enough relevant keywords to make the search useful.
metadoktor
"The doktor is in."
| [reply] |
As danger mentioned, there is more than one CPAN search engine to use. I did a search on 'database' using CPAN Search - and DBI came up as well as several other modules. Just a note on searching CPAN... I find this CPAN Search engine more useful than search.cpan.org.
| [reply] |
If you're just looking to search for modules by category CPAN already lets you do that easily. You can also view modules by author, name, and recentness.
Picking amoung the various modules is the hard part. For common purposes everyone seems to have their favorite, but there usually are 3 or 4 main ones that people use. Ask around, then try all of the commonly recommended (and maybe some of the not so commonly recommended) ones out and use the one that best suits what you're trying to do. | [reply] |
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This is the search engine that I always tend to use though sometimes I have problems finding things even with this.
search.cpan.org
Your mileage may vary.
metadoktor
"The doktor is in." | [reply] |