Several mailing lists are focused on more specialized aspects of Perl. Like Usenet newsgroups, mailing lists are discussion groups, but the discussion takes place over email. In general, mailing lists aren’t as convenient as newsgroups, since a few hundred mail messages a day about Perl can become intrusive to any but the most obsessive Perl hackers. However, because mailing lists tend to have much smaller and more focused distributions, you’ll find that they can sometimes be much more interesting and helpful than newsgroups.

There are tons of mailing lists for Perl users and developers alike. Some are specific to a particular module or distribution, such as the mailing lists for users of CGI.pm, LWP, DBI, or mod_perl. Other mailing lists discuss using Perl on non-Unix platforms such as Windows, Macintosh or VMS. Still more mailing lists are devoted to the development and advocacy of Perl in general.

For a list of Perl-related mailing lists, refer to the Perl Mailing List Database (lists.cpan.org) or to the list maintained by the Perl Mongers at http://www.perl.org/support/mailing_lists.html.

Many of these mailing lists maintain a “digest” version, which means that instead of receiving individual email messages all day long, you receive a few “digests” of the messages on a regular basis. Digests of a mailing list might be preferable to the minute-by-minute onslaught of email throughout the day, depending on how involved you are in the discussion.