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perlman:lib:FindBin

by root (Monk)

on Dec 23, 1999 at 00:49 UTC ( #1114=perlfunc: print w/replies, xml )

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lib:FindBin

See the current Perl documentation for lib:FindBin.

Here is our local, out-dated (pre-5.6) version:

FindBin - Locate directory of original perl script

 use FindBin;
 use lib "$FindBin::Bin/../lib";

or

 use FindBin qw($Bin);
 use lib "$Bin/../lib";

Locates the full path to the script bin directory to allow the use of paths relative to the bin directory.

This allows a user to setup a directory tree for some software with directories <root>/bin and <root>/lib and then the above example will allow the use of modules in the lib directory without knowing where the software tree is installed.

If perl is invoked using the -e option or the perl script is read from STDIN then FindBin sets both $Bin and $RealBin to the current directory.

EXPORTABLE VARIABLES

 $Bin         - path to bin directory from where script was invoked
 $Script      - basename of script from which perl was invoked
 $RealBin     - $Bin with all links resolved
 $RealScript  - $Script with all links resolved

KNOWN BUGS

if perl is invoked as

   perl filename

and filename does not have executable rights and a program called filename exists in the users $ENV{PATH} which satisfies both -x and -T then FindBin assumes that it was invoked via the $ENV{PATH}.

Workaround is to invoke perl as