Up to this point, my perl experience has been largely in general scripting tasks and one large application. When DrZaius told me that my Find Ethernet Card Manufacturer script might be better as a module, I realized that this was an area in which I had little experience.

I've read the appropriate sections in the Camel book a couple of times, along with perlmod and perlmodlib and even browsed around CPAN a bit, thinking that they might at least have some guidelines for module creation. For the first time in my perl career, I am feeling rather dissatisfied with the documentation I've read.

For example, in the post mentioned above, DrZaius suggested that I include the mac address database into the __DATA__ section of a module. For the life of me, I can't seem to find any documentation about the __DATA__ section of a module.

I'm also curious about the ramifications of use and require statements, when it make more sense to use an object-oriented approach, etc.

Does you have any pointers to resources that might help me explore this facet of perl? Or perhaps you think I'm making the topic overcomplicated and can enlighten me in that regard.