Thanks for this. It looks like a script I will use.

The reason I used the automated system is that, as a newbie, I don't know which directories .tar.gz files should be downloaded to on my system. Also, at the beginning, there are large numbers of tarballs to download. It's nicer to use cpan's automated discovery of prerequisite packages that need to be downloaded than to discover them one by one.

Thanks for your help

David