cpan modules search from the command line?

From the CPAN shell:

cpan> m Module::Name 

This will search for a module.

Source

You're not wrong about the fact that perl -MCPAN -e shell starts the CPAN shell, but usually, you'll have also cpan available, which is much less typing and will spawn the CPAN shell as well. And if you only want to install the module Spread you can simply type this on the command line (thus without starting the CPAN shell):

cpan Spread

and that will be all.

Try this:

perl -MData::Dumper -MCPAN -e 'print Dumper([CPAN::Shell->expandany("Spread")])'