Re: Favourite modules March 2004

Here's the short list of modules I don't like to be caught without. These are the ones that I don't just find convenient from time to time but rely on constantly.

CPAN. Perl isn't properly installed until this is set up, as far as I'm concerned.
DateTime (I might die without this one.) Also certain DateTime::Format modules to go with it.
DBI and one of the DBD modules. (I've been using DBD::mysql, but one of the others will probably do just as well. You want the corresponding DateTime::Format module, e.g., DateTime::Format::MySQL, to go with it.) I also have my own little wrapper module with functions for my most common queries (add (takes a table name and a hashref), update (ditto), and so on), but if I need to do something I don't have a function for I can always hand-build a query on the db handle.
WWW::Mechanize saves a lot of time. If you do a lot of this, you might also want HTML::Tree as a companion. The look_down method is pretty keen.
Archive::Zip is spectacularly useful, especially for dealing with OpenOffice documents. (Next question: will I eventually pick an XML module similar to HTML::Tree and use that in conjunction with Archive::Zip for parsing, modifying, and saving my documents? So far I'm still dealing with the XML by hand...)
Data::Dumper is a really useful debugging aid. There's also Data::Dumper::Streamer
Clone::PP is helpful. The most common things I clone are DateTime objects.
Finally, I have a handful of my own include files that I wouldn't want to be without; I copy them to every system I use Perl on. These aren't modules per se, as I 'require' rather than 'use' them.

;$;=sub{$/};@;=map{my($a,$b)=($_,$;);$;=sub{$a.$b->()}} split//,".rekcah lreP rehtona tsuJ";$\=$;[-1]->();print

Comment on Re: Favourite modules March 2004

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Re: Re: Favourite modules March 2004 by autarch (Hermit) on Mar 09, 2004 at 06:06 UTC
Clone::PP is helpful. The most common things I clone are DateTime objects. But DateTime has a clone() method! Why not use that?	[reply]
Re: Favourite modules March 2004 by jonadab (Parson) on Mar 10, 2004 at 13:53 UTC
But DateTime has a clone() method! Why not use that? Oh, so it does. Cool. Well, mark that as one less use for Clone::PP from now on (though of course it'll still be useful for other stuff) :-) `;$;=sub{$/};@;=map{my($a,$b)=($_,$;);$;=sub{$a.$b->()}}` `split//,".rekcah lreP rehtona tsuJ";$\=$;[-1]->();print`	[reply]