This is a sub I use as part of a man.cgi app, an interface to look up perl docs.

use strict;
use Pod::Simple::Search;
use constant DEBUG => 0;

for (qw(CGI.pm File::PathInfo HTML/Template.pm Smart::Comments)){
    my $name = $_;
    my $returned = lookup_as_perl($name);
    print " ARG: $name = $returned\n";
}


sub lookup_as_perl {
    my $arg_name = shift;
    print STDERR "lookup_as_perl() $arg_name, " if DEBUG; 
    $arg_name=~s/^\/+//; # take out leading slashes
    $arg_name=~s/\/+/\:\:/g;
    $arg_name=~s/\.html$|\.pod$|\.pm$//;
    $arg_name=~s/\/+/\:\:/g;    
    print STDERR "cleaned to $arg_name, " if DEBUG;     
    
    #can we find this?
    my $search = Pod::Simple::Search->new;
    my $result = $search->find($arg_name);

    $result ||= 0;
    
    print STDERR  "result = $result\n" if DEBUG;
    
    return $result;    
}
# returns ...
#[betti@mescaline cgihelp]# perl test.pl
# ARG: CGI.pm = /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/CGI.pm
# ARG: File::PathInfo = /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/File/PathInfo.p
+m
# ARG: CGI::Carp = /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/CGI/Carp.pm
# ARG: Smart::Comments = /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/Smart/Comments
+.pm
# ARG: HTML/Template.pm = /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/HTML/Template
+.pm
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