Anyway, I want to be able to script the installation of a bunch of CPAN modules, and the first basic problem I am coming up against is that the "cpan" command seems to always return 0 regardless of whether or not the install completed.
While I can't answer that, I might try to actually call a Perl check after which although slightly extra work would yield the answer.
You installing these locally in a non root users home? :)
If not, I can tell you that will wreak havoc if a Perl related updated comes down the pipe via yum...