There's nothing wrong with putting a module on CPAN that has the same functionality as an existing module. It's not that the first person to put something on CPAN is somekind of super-coder whose code can't be improved. Anyone can upload something on CPAN, and there isn't any code review. Too often people give the impression that if it's on CPAN, it has to be good code. This is not true - there's good code on CPAN, but there's also a lot of bad code. Code that's broken, inefficient, platform or environment specific, or which has a lousy API.

If there's a piece of code on CPAN that doesn't do what you want, or which you consider not up to your standards, by all means, rewrite it and upload it on CPAN. In the worst case, all it does it take some diskspace on some CPAN mirrors. But others might agree with you and prefer your implementation over what's already there, and your contribution will enrich CPAN.

Go for it.

Abigail

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