nua7 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi All Perl experts, I am new to Perl and got a real stupid question. We are trying to install the Date:Calc package for some calculations with dates.The security guys mentioned they won't install it as root in /usr/bin/perl but have asked us to install it in any directory and use it from there. Here's the sample program that I created to test this scenario.But I am getting an error.Any help will be appreciated. 
(rk3388) mpdev1=> ./test1.pl
Can't locate Date/Calc.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /home/ss1880/Date-Ca
+lc-6.3/li.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at ./test1.pl line 4.

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#!/usr/bin/perl
use lib '/home/ss1880/Date-Calc-6.3/lib/Date/';
use Date::Calc;
my @today = (localtime)[5,4,3];
$today[0] += 1900;
$today[1]++;

my @birthday = (1980, 4, 3);

my $days = Delta_Days(@birthday, @today);

print "I am $days days old\n";

exit 0;

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Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Simple perl question
by toolic (Bishop) on Nov 08, 2012 at 14:05 UTC
[reply]
[d/l]
      Almost the same error : 
      Can't locate Carp/Clan.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /home/ss1880/Date-Ca
+lc-6.3/li.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /home/ss1880/Date-Calc-6.3/lib/Da
+te/Calc/P.
Compilation failed in require at /home/ss1880/Date-Calc-6.3/lib/Date/C
+alc.pm li.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /home/ss1880/Date-Calc-6.3/lib/Da
+te/Calc.p.
Compilation failed in require at test1.pl line 3.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at test1.pl line 3.

      [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
        Before you do anything else, read Writeup Formatting Tips (as I already advised), and update your posts using "code" tags for your error messages and Perl code. Your posts are difficult to understand.
[reply]
        Those error messages are incomplete. My best guess is that Carp::Clan is not installed yet.
[reply]
Re: Simple perl question
by karlgoethebier (Abbot) on Nov 08, 2012 at 19:31 UTC

    Another approach to this issue:

    Isn't Date::Calc in core? It should be available with your standard perl installation, regardless you use Linux or M$-Dog or something else.

    If it is not there for any strange reasons consider this (after download in the unpacked src directory of Date::Calc):

    perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/path/to/your/lib

    Say then:

     make && make test && make install

    Then, in your app say:

    use lib q(/path/to/your/lib);
use Date::Calc;

    [download]

    And i can't see any security problems installing modules as root. How else should this be done in the default places?. E.g. on my Mac:

    Karls-Mac-mini:~ karl$ perl -e 'print join(qq(\n), @INC);'
/sw/lib/perl5
/sw/lib/perl5/darwin
/Library/Perl/5.12/darwin-thread-multi-2level
/Library/Perl/5.12
# and many more...

    [download]

    And:

    Karls-Mac-mini:~ karl$ ls -hlrt /Library/Perl/5.12
total 216
-r--r--r--   1 root  wheel    31K 26 Feb  2011 PPI.pm
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    33B 11 Okt  2011 AppendToPath
-r--r--r--   1 root  wheel   543B  4 Apr  2012 oo.pm
-r--r--r--   1 root  wheel    20K 18 Jun 13:32 Carp.pm
-r--r--r--   1 root  wheel   8,9K  9 Sep 03:15 strictures.pm
-r--r--r--   1 root  wheel   946B 11 Sep 20:24 ok.pm
-r--r--r--   1 root  wheel    23K 23 Okt 17:27 Moo.pm
drwxr-xr-x   3 root  wheel   102B 27 Okt 13:46 B
drwxr-xr-x   7 root  wheel   238B 27 Okt 13:48 DateTime
# and many more...

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    As you can see everything belongs to root:wheel but the rest can use it anyway. This is the default: Stuff belongs to root:wheel in that directories but is used under your UID if you call it.

    A thing one might think about is: I don't want to mess up my default @INC. Then use PREFIX as described above.

    BTW: Consider to take a look at Datetime. And trust toolic.

    As always, i hope i didn't miss something.

    Regards, Karl

    P.S.: I did something wrong, s***t. If installing as root, make install as root , or root does it himself, sorry for that - sink before you type ;-)

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
      Isn't Date::Calc in core?
      No (as of perl 5.14): 
      corelist Date::Calc

Date::Calc was not in CORE (or so I think)

      [download]
[reply]
[d/l]

        ...right for my Mac too using v5.12.3:

        Karls-Mac-mini:~ karl$ corelist Date::Calc
Date::Calc was not in CORE (or so I think)

        [download]

        I installed it and forgot about...

[reply]
[d/l]

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