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cPanel Perl modules and elements to learn

1. Core Perl (mandatory)

  • Scalars, arrays, hashes
  • References
  • Subroutines
  • strict, warnings
  • Context (scalar vs list)
  • @ARGV, %ENV

2. Object-Oriented Perl

  • bless, constructors
  • Inheritance (parent, @ISA, mro)
  • Method dispatch
  • Lightweight OO patterns (not Moose-heavy)

3. Module & Runtime System

  • use, require, Exporter
  • %INC
  • Module::Load, Module::Runtime
  • Versioning (version)

4. CLI & UX (very common in cPanel)

  • Getopt::Long, Getopt::Std
  • Pod::Usage
  • Positional args
  • Exit codes

5. Filesystem & OS Interaction

  • open, sysopen
  • File::* (Path, Temp, Find, Copy)
  • stat, permissions
  • IPC::*, system, backticks
  • /proc usage

6. Error Handling & Safety

  • die, warn, Carp
  • eval {} / $@
  • Try::Tiny
  • autodie
  • Taint mode -T

7. Regex & Text Processing (critical)

  • Heavy regex usage
  • Text::*, Regexp::Common
  • Parsing configs, logs, output

8. Data Serialization & Debugging

  • Data::Dumper
  • Storable
  • JSON, JSON::PP, JSON::XS
  • YAML
  • Debug helpers (Devel::*)

9. Networking & HTTP

  • LWP, HTTP::*
  • Net::*, IO::Socket::*
  • Net::Ping
  • SSL stack (IO::Socket::SSL, Net::SSLeay)
  • APIs, local services

10. Databases & Storage

  • DBI
  • DBM files (DB_File, GDBM_File, NDBM_File)
  • Lightweight persistence

11. Localization & Encoding

  • Locale::Maketext
  • UTF-8 handling
  • Encode, Unicode::*
  • IMAP/charset quirks

12. Time & System Info

  • Time::Piece, Time::HiRes
  • Sys::* (mem, hostname, process)
  • Cron-friendly patterns

13. Concurrency (used sparingly)

  • threads
  • Thread::Queue
  • Shared data pitfalls

14. Testing & Tooling (reading, not writing)

  • Test::*
  • Test::Simple, Test::Harness
  • Mocking basics

15. Packaging & Legacy Reality

  • RPM-shipped core modules
  • Older idioms
  • Globals, large files, side effects
  • Minimal abstraction