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Comprehensive Perl Archive Network Comprehensive Perl Archive Network ( CPAN ). A Perl module is a collection of reusable Perl code. The naming convention requires it to have a .pm extension. With several thousand modules out there, it gets hard to find the one we want. So, the librarians at CPAN ( Comprehensive Perl Archive Network ) have come up with a solution: we split up the module package names into hierarchies. Instead of having tens of modules about sorting, we now have: Sort::Fields, Sort::Versions and so on. This hierarchy is only a naming scheme. It doesn't mean that Sort::Fields and Sort::Versions are somehow related to a bigger package called Sort: it's a simply way of making it easier to categorize modules. So, how do we store these in files? Sort::Fields will actually be stored in a file called Fields.pm in a directory called Sort. Using a bareword tells perl to look for a file called with .pm extension in the @INC path. It also converts any instance of :: into a directory separator. CPAN is the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, a large collection of Perl software ( 17901 modules ) and documentation. Note that CPAN is also the name of a Perl module, CPAN.pm, which is used to download and install Perl software from the CPAN archive. If you're using ActivePerl on Windows, the PPM ( Perl Package Manager ) has much of the same functionality as CPAN.pm. In general modules and scripts come with their own documentation which should have been installed along with your module/script. Most, though not all, modules on CPAN are licensed under the GNU Public License ( GPL ) or the Artistic license and should be stated in the documentation that accompanies the module itself.
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