A CPAN Overview
You'll see the CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network) referred to many times in this text, and after some consideration, we've decided that the overview of what it is, its history, how it works, and why it's so important belongs here, in the first chapter, rather than in the appendix. The CPAN, with its vast resources and tools, is the foundation of this book. We'll do very little without the help of a module, extension or other tool, including the source code for Perl itself, from the CPAN.