snippet liz <B>* UPDATE * Please see [id://317309] for further developments.</B> <P> This came from a discussion in the CB with [castaway], who wished that direct module prerequisites would have to be at least listed in the README file. <P> Of course, as an author of a CPAN module, you put the prerequisites in the Makefile.PL script. <P> This code needs to be added to that Makefile.PL script by the author. It scans its own source for PREREQ_PM and extracts the module names from there. It then places those modules names inside the README file wherever the string "Required Modules:" and two empty lines are found. Voila, instant documentation! <CODE> open( my $makefile, '<', $0) or die "Could not open $0: $!\n"; $_ = do {local $/; <$makefile>}; if (($_) = m#PREREQ_PM\s*=>\s*{([^}]+)}#) { my @module = map {s#['"]##g; $_} m#(\S+)\s*=>#sg; open( my $readme, '<', 'README' ) or die "Could not open README: $!\n"; $_ = do {local $/; <$readme>}; if (s#(\nRequired Modules:\n)(?:.*?)(\n\n)#"$1 ".(do {local $"="\n ","@module"}).$2#se) { open( $readme, '>', 'README' ) or die "Could not open README: $!\n"; print $readme $_; } } </CODE>