Hi,
However, as has been pointed out regarding MS Word, most users only
use a very tiny subset of its functionality. The problem is that the
users
are using different subsets. I've done huge amounts of HTML parsing and
can't recall having used GDBM_File.
It all comes to *different* subsets ....
I think if we leave out but one module from CPAN, someone will miss it.
However, 98% of all Perl users will be happy with 2% of all (current
Perl5) CPAN modules.
I wrote a lot of Perl for Unix, VMS and Windows system management,
text files processing and connectivity to databases (Oracle and LDAP).
I never used an HTML parser and only used LWP once.
So for me a stripped down version of Perl with reasonable I/O
capabilities (print, open, close, <FH>) would be just enough and i can
settle for an easy-to-install connectivity bundle.
Then again, i only represent myself.
<really_just_imho>
Some use Perl for biometric, some for converting SVG to PDF, some for
creating desktop applications. But that is not typical. System
administration and "web/net programming" covers most of the tasks most
Perl users use Perl for. So my list would be something like:
- basic protocols, say UDP and TCP (so that you have something to build on)
- a little more higher level protocols, say HTTP / HTTPS, POP3, IMAP,
SMTP (you want to *send mail*, don't you?)
- something LWP-like, so you can handle GET/POST and Cookies
- something CGI-like, so that you can url_encode(),
$cgi->param("submit") and such
- Digest::* Who can live without md5_hex() ?
- Crypt::* DES, 3DES, Blowfish, SSL...
- Serialize: thaw/freeze (yep, something like Storable)
- something like Data::Dumper (to see what you are doing)
- a template handler (like TT2 - preferably TT3 or TT6 :))
- XML parsing/generation (we must be serious...)
- HTML parsing, I second that (so that you can WWW::Mechanize and
HTML::FillInForm and so on...)
- command line argument parsing (LongOpt or whatsthename)
- DBI
- MIME (you want to send mail with attachments, too :))
- some kind of image manipulation, probably using an external library
(to populate your TGPs :))) - ImageMagick comes to the mind
And for the sake of my open source Perl5 framework, so that I can start
thinking about the Perl6 version :), these would make *me* happy :
- FastCGI
- Config::General
- Cache::*
</really_just_imho>
- Fagzal
