Finding out What Modules are Installed

Here are some tricks for finding out what Modules are installed.

Preinstalled Modules

To find out what modules come with perl, look in Appendix A of Perl 5 Pocket Reference. From the command line, use the perldoc command from the UNIX shell. All the Perl documentation is available with this command:

% perldoc perlmodlib
PERLMODLIB(1)  User Contributed Perl Documentation  PERLMODLIB(1)

NAME
       perlmodlib - constructing new Perl modules and finding
       existing ones

DESCRIPTION
THE PERL MODULE LIBRARY
       Many modules are included the Perl distribution.  These
       are described below, and all end in .pm.  You may discover
...
       Standard Modules

       Standard, bundled modules are all expected to behave in a
       well-defined manner with respect to namespace pollution
       because they use the Exporter module.  See their own docu-
       mentation for details.

       AnyDBM_File Provide framework for multiple DBMs

       AutoLoader  Load subroutines only on demand

       AutoSplit   Split a package for autoloading

       B           The Perl Compiler
...

To learn more about a module, run perldoc with the module's name:

% perldoc File::Basename

NAME
       fileparse - split a pathname into pieces

       basename - extract just the filename from a path

       dirname - extract just the directory from a path

SYNOPSIS
           use File::Basename;

           ($name,$path,$suffix) = fileparse($fullname,@suffixlist)
           fileparse_set_fstype($os_string);
           $basename = basename($fullname,@suffixlist);
           $dirname = dirname($fullname);
...

Optional Modules that You May Have Installed

perldoc perllocal will list the names of locally installed modules.

% perldoc perllocal
       Thu Apr 27 16:01:31 2000: "Module" the DBI manpage

       o   "installed into: /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl"

       o   "LINKTYPE: dynamic"

       o   "VERSION: 1.13"

       o   "EXE_FILES: dbish dbiproxy"

       Thu Apr 27 16:01:41 2000: "Module" the Data::ShowTable
       manpage

       o   "installed into: /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl"

       o   "LINKTYPE: dynamic"

       o   "VERSION: 3.3"

       o   "EXE_FILES: showtable"

       Tue May 16 18:26:27 2000: "Module" the Image::Magick man-
       page
...

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