it's about a (perceived) lack of effort

I guess that's my point. We know about CPAN and how to search it. Does he? Is the perceived lack of effort really a lack of effort, or the fact that we know about CPAN and we are looking at it that way?

I agree the question was worded badly. But couldn't his 'help' request mean 'Can you show where I can find this out?'. Can't we give the benefit of the doubt?

As a test I googled 'perl sort XML' and this was the first link. I think we can all agree that it is not the least bit helpful.