Some MetaCPAN advanced search tricks using prefixes

MetaCPAN

The other day I wrote about the possibility to list modules in a given namespace using the module: prefix.

As it turns out there are more such prefixes that can be used.

There is even a ticket discussing how to make those more accessible to the users.

While that discussion goes on, let me show a few examples:

module:

Filter by module name:

module:Plack::Middleware - list all the modules in the given namespace.

module:Plack::Middleware Oauth Search for Oauth in the given namespace.

module:Middleware search for all the Middleware. Apparently the module: prefix matches any full part of the module names. (Hint: searching for module:iddleware does not bring any results.)

distribution:

Filter by distribution:

distribution:Dancer auth search for auth in the Dancer distribution.

vs

module:Dancer auth search for auth in the modules with Dancer in their name.

distribution:Dancer-Plugin-Auth-CAS auth search in the Dancer-Plugin-Auth-CAS distribution.

vs

module:Dancer::Plugin auth search in all the modules in the Dancer::Plugins namespace.

author:

Filter by author:

author:SONGMU All the modules by author SONGMU.

author:SONGMU Redis - all the Redis related modules by author SONGMU.

version:

Filter by version number:

version:0.01 all the (I think distributions) with version number 0.01.

version:0.1 similar for 0.1

There are a few strange modules with version:12, version:14, and even version:100.

Some wildcards can be also used: version:5.* or include a bit more results: version:5* or only one digit (character) after the dot: version:5.?

Combined prefixes

You can also combine these meta-searches

author:RJBS version:0.0*

module:Dancer author:TLINDEN.

What other interesting search can you come up with?

(Hint, in this ticket there are links explaining the valid prefixes and the valid special characters.

Other pages

What you need to know about CPAN
Meta::CPAN
Finding all Plack Middleware or Perl::Critic Policies

Author

Gabor Szabo (szabgab) Gabor Szabo