Well, in principle it's 
my $bold = "\e[1m";
my $plain = "\e[m";

print "${bold}Bold text${plain} Plain text\n";

[download]
Don't know about the CPAN shell specifically, but if it's to produce "fancy" looking output, it needs to send escape sequences to the terminal, like the ones above...

In reply to Re: CPAN shell command formatting by Anonymous Monk
in thread CPAN shell command formatting by hda

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