Related link: http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2005/view/e_sess/6440

This year, Damian had over a dozen new or greatly improved CPAN modules to discuss, so only had time to touch on them lightly. The following is a quick list, for those that want to investigate further:

IO::Prompt

Improved in several ways, including a new menuing feature

IO::Interactive

Handle all of the special edge case testing to determine if the user is interactive, or piping information in or out; also, provide a special filehandle that will either print or blackhole, depending on the interactive state

IO::Busy

Deal with users who try to type when they shouldn’t during long-running tasks

Log::StdLog

Just do simple logging, by providing a STDLOG filehandle that just does the right thing

Debug::Phases

Indicate beginning of Perl’s compile and run phases, and report time spent compiling

Sub::Installer

Handle symbol table and strict/warn manipulation for you when you want to just do your own exporting

RegExp::MatchContext

$PREMATCH, $MATCH, and $POSTMATCH, except faster and better

Contextual::Return

Declarative wantarray

Perl6::Export::Attrs

Perl 6-like export syntax for Perl 5

Config::Std

A somewhat improved .INI format, and the ability to preserve comments and ordering when updating a config file

GetOpt::Euclid

Generate command line options parsing from the documentation

Toolkit

Have all the modules and imported functions you want, all the time, with just a single use

Which new Damian module is your favorite?