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Comment by mike-cardwell | Hacker News Reader

Interesting. I would have done it this way previously:

  perl -MData::Dumper -e 'print $Data::Dumper::VERSION."\n"'

Works for any module:

    $ perl -MLWP::UserAgent\ 999             
    LWP::UserAgent version 999 required--this is only version 5.833.

  mike@server:~$ perl -MLWP::UserAgent -e 'print $LWP::UserAgent::VERSION."\n"'
  5.835
  mike@server:~$

That works, too!

Even shorter, as -l appends \n to all prints:

    $ perl -MLWP::UserAgent -le 'print $LWP::UserAgent::VERSION'

Even shorter!

    $ M=LWP::UserAgent && perl -M$M -le "print \$$M::VERSION"

Even even shorter!

    $ M=LWP::UserAgent;perl -M$M -Esay\$$M::VERSION

This reminds me of that joke in which jokes have been reduced to numbers. It's nearly as obscure, too.

Did Gödel come up with that joke?

Well, almost any module:

    $ perl -MFile::Slurp\ 9999
    <hangs forever>