I'm with hippo; not sure why you are doing this but here are some ideas.

First, MetaCPAN has its own module. Borrowed directly from MetaCPAN::Client's own Pod:

#Or, to get either the given version of a release, or the latest:
              
my $releases = $mcpan->release( {
    all => [
      { distribution => 'GraphViz2' },
      ($version ? { version => $version } : { status => 'latest' }),
    ],
} );
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My guess is that you are trying to find out what is latest and greatest with a module. If you are not doing that perhaps you should be trying to ensure that you have the correct version installed. There are modules specifically designed for this but, to me, unless a script has no dependencies I simply do not see why people do not write up some actual tests.

#!/bin/bash
perl -MTest::More=no_plan -e 'my $prio = shift; if (use_ok(qq~$prio~))
+ { no strict q~refs~; print ${$prio . qq~::VERSION~} . qq~\n~} else {
+print qq~WTF!!!!!!\n\n~};' Exporter
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Prints...

ok 1 - use Exporter;
5.78
1..1
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Whereas...

perl ... BLAHMODULE
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Prints...

not ok 1 - use BLAHMODULE;
...
WTF!!!!!!
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The above is actualy bad usage but I wanted to demonstrate that you can check for versions on the command line via passing in the module name. The use_ok() method in Test::More takes a version:

use_ok(qq~CGI~,9.999);
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Which fails, of course, because that is not the installed version.