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A collection of useful resources to help you master Perl
Perl comes equipped with a set of core modules which you can find listed on perldoc. Typically you will be able to use any of these modules immediately. (Some distributions may require you to install core modules separately).
Awesome Perl is a curated list of useful modules, and also refers to a selection of other lists of recommendations.
There are several module installers available for Perl, which will allow you to install a wide variety of modules available on CPAN.
A very fast and straightforward module installer. There is a tutorial available on CPAN.
You will have this already installed if you followed the local::lib
instructions from the installation documentation.
Simply run cpm install to install required modules from a cpanfile,
and use the --with-recommends or --with-suggested to install recommended
or suggested modules respectively.
Run cpm install Module::Name to install a specific module locally, or
run cpm install -g Module::Name to install globally.
The most well-known and commonly used module installer available. Instructions for installation can be found on CPAN.
Run cpanm -L local --installdeps . to install required modules
from a cpanfile.
Run cpanm -L local Module::Name to install a specific module
locally, or run cpanm Module::Name to install globally.
If you are looking for good general advices regarding Perl coding, Damian Conway's Perl Best Practices is a good reference.
To prettify your code, you can use the module Perl::Tidy.
You can then use the provided perltidy utility program
to reformat your code.
# modify file in-place and save old version as some_script.pl.bak
$ perltidy -b some_script.pl
perltidy has a lot of configuration options to cater to every taste. They
are documented here.
There is also tidyview, a visual interface that allows you to tweak the different options and immediately see the result.
If you want to enforce coding practices, there is also Perl::Critic. It comes with the rules described in the book Perl Best Practices mentioned previously, but plenty of plugins exist, and it can be customized to fit any in-house coding rules.
To use:
$ perlcritic some_script.pl
The tool has many, many configuration tweaks, see its documentation for the full scoop on them.