I find convenience methods necessary - I don't want to slurp a file into a scalar, I want to pass a filename (or a file glob or an URI, or a callback, if applicable) to the function. This boils down to either massive dwimmery within the core function or some (several) wrapper functions, for example for the parse_file/parse_uri part versus the parse_scalar part.

If you fear that those helper functions bloat your original module, create a *::Simple or *::Common module, which encapsulates the more common cases (for example, HTML::LinkExtor, HTTP::Request::Common or Regex::Common are such modules). A *::Simple module would cut down on the options and supply sensible defaults.

perl -MHTTP::Daemon -MHTTP::Response -MLWP::Simple -e ' ;    # The  
$d = new HTTP::Daemon and fork and getprint $d->url and exit;#spider
($c = $d->accept())->get_request(); $c->send_response( new   #in the
HTTP::Response(200,$_,$_,qq(Just another Perl hacker\n))); ' #  web
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