I was working on a response to File::Find::prune problems, when I saw grinder's response:

"If you're starting out with File::Find, then the best advice I can give you is... don't. It is old and bletcherous and there's no need to use it for new work."

So off I went to look at File::Find::Rule, which he'd suggested. And you know what? It is a really neat, and I'll probably be using it over File::Find from now on.

But I don't really want to talk about File::Find, I want to talk about CPAN. I'm always finding modules via PerlMonks that I like better than what I'm using (which I got via my own CPAN searching). Part of the reason for that is I tend to go with the first-fit rather than the best-fit. Why? Because my CPAN ritual is sort of a pain in the rear:

  1. Initial search, either by category or Kobe's search to find a candidate.
  2. Skim the documentation,
  3. Still looking good? Great, look through the reviews. Not a lot of reviews? No reviews? Okay, go check the bug tracker, and search on Perlmonks. Maybe CPAN testers, annocpan, and cpanforum too.
  4. Do I want to go back to step one? No, just install it.

So my question is, is there any better metric or search methodology that will get me quality/popluarity information about a module faster? How do you go about finding solutions on CPAN?

In reply to Using CPAN effectively; Finding the best fit module. by amarquis

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