In futue issues, this column that will provide brief descriptions of the latest modules. But to launch the column, I'll serve up a CPAN buffet: a listing of the all the CPAN bundles and a sampling of modules from each. The modules I've chosen aren't necessarily the most popular or the most useful, but those most likely to give you an inkling of what you'll find when you browse through the hundreds of modules available. Be sure to check the exhaustive (90K) module list, tirelessly edited by Tim Bunce and Andreas König. You can find copies at:
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/perl-faq/module-list
https://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/00modlist.long.html
Perl Core Modules, Perl Language Extensions, and Documentation Tools: English, Filter::decrypt, Safe, Pod::HTML
Development Support: Benchmark, Test::Peek, Devel::DProf, Make
Operating System Interfaces: MSDOS::SysCalls, SGI::SysCalls, Mac::AppleEvents, OS2::ExtAttr, BSD::Resource, Sys::Hostname, Quota, Shell, POSIX, Ioctl, Fcntl, Env
Networking, Device Control (modems), Interprocess Communication: Socket, Net::Ping, IPC::Open2, DCE::Registry
Data Types and Data Type Utilities: Math::ematica, Date::Parse, Object::Info, Math::BigFloat, Time::ParseDate, Data::Dumper
Database Interfaces: Oraperl, Sybase::DBlib, GDBM_File
User Interfaces (Character and Graphical): Term::Complete, Term::ReadKey, Term::Gnuplot, Curses, Tk, Motif
Interfaces to or Emulations of Other Programming Languages: Tcl, C::Scan, Language::Prolog
File Names, File Systems and File Locking (see also File Handles): File::Find, File::Basename, File::Checktree, File::Lock
String Processing, Language Text Processing, Parsing and Searching: String::Approx, String::Edit, Text::Abbrev, Anagram, Font::AFM
Option, Argument, Parameter and Configuration File Processing: Getopt::Long, Getopt::Regex, Resources
Internationalization and Locale: Locale::gettext, I18N::Collate
Authentication, Security and Encryption: PGP, MD5, DES, SHA
World Wide Web, HTML, HTTP, CGI, MIME: CGI::Imagemap, HTML::QuickCheck, HTTP::Message, HTTPD::UserAdmin
Server and Daemon Utilities: EventServer, Server::Echo::UdpD
Archiving, Compression and Conversion: Convert::UU
Images, Pixmap and Bitmap Manipulation, Drawing and Graphing: Image::Size, GD, OpenGL, PGPlot
Mail and Usenet News: Mail::Address, News::Newsrc
Control Flow Utilities (e.g. callbacks and exceptions): Callback
File Handle, Directory Handle and Input/Output Stream Utilities: IO::Handle, IO::Pipe, FileCache, DirHandle
Microsoft Windows Modules: Win32::OLE, WinNT
Miscellaneous Modules: Archie, Neural, Logfile, Roman, CreditCard
The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network
Secure your place in the Perl pantheon by writing a module of your own and contributing to the CPAN: https://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/04pause.html for details. Tim and Andreas' module list contains some excellent tips about how to write, document, and name your module.
You probably already have a few of the modules listed here, such as English, POSIX, Env, Math::BigFloat, and Socket. They're bundled with the standard Perl distribution, and you can find them in your lib directory. The location of lib depends on your Perl configuration; execute perl -e 'print "@INC"' to see where your Perl looks for modules, or use the Config module to see where modules were installed on your system: perl -e 'use Config; print $Config{privlib}'.
If your module is stable and of general interest to Perl programmers, let me know by sending a brief description (no more than a short paragraph) to perl-journal-submissions@perl.com for inclusion in this column.