* Elliot Shank <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2008-03-26T14:20:20] > Hans Dieter Pearcey wrote: >> Is there anything else that should be included? > > How about changing things? > > Kindly call it a module, and not a package, because what you're describing > isn't one.
Yes it is. Alternately: explain what you mean. Here is what I mean: The CPAN contains files which are dists. Each dist contains a number of files which are installed to be used as modules. Each module contains a number of namespaces which are packages. When you tell the CPAN shell to install Foo::Bar, it doesn't look for the Foo::Bar module, it looks for the Foo::Bar package, which may be located as an inner package of Foo.pm. It does this by looking up the package name in an index helpfully called 02packages.details.txt. Now, there is a quirk, which I hope to see changed: Inner packages are not indexed reliably. An inner package is indexed only if one of a few sort of weird rules are met -- but they are indexed, and appear in 02packages. Those are package names, not module names. It is a happy coincidence that in some large fraction of cases, they are the same name. Having a cpan://module/Foo::Bar would let you refer to a module, but since there is no good comprehensive index of modules, it doesn't seem very useful. -- rjbs
