cpan modules search from the command line?

Question

If I'm not wrong the first step to start with the command line with cpan is next

# perl -MCPAN -e shell

but I don't know what I should do for looking a module, can you help me, what should I write to find next module?:

http://search.cpan.org/~jesus/Spread-3.17.4.4/Spread.pm

Answer 1

From the CPAN shell:

cpan> m Module::Name

This will search for a module.

Source

Answer 2

You're not wrong about the fact that perl -MCPAN -e shell starts the CPAN shell, but usually, you'll have also cpan available, which is much less typing and will spawn the CPAN shell as well. And if you only want to install the module Spread you can simply type this on the command line (thus without starting the CPAN shell):

cpan Spread

and that will be all.

Answer 3

Try this:

perl -MData::Dumper -MCPAN -e 'print Dumper([CPAN::Shell->expandany("Spread")])'