perllocal EXE_FILES and %Config

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

I noticed some inconsistent entries in perllocal for modules that have EXE_FILES:

Acme::MetaSyntactic (script/ is typical)
EXE_FILES: script/meta script/metafy

Pod::Parser
EXE_FILES: scripts/podselect

CGI-Kwiki
EXE_FILES: inc/SCRIPTS/kwiki-install

GD
EXE_FILES: bdf_scripts/bdf2gdfont.pl

App::FatPacker (bin/ is typical too)
EXE_FILES: bin/fatpack

Despite all that, everything listed as EXE_FILES ends up in the same directory, specified (on my system) by 12 %Config variables with the same exact value as $Config{bin}:

/Users/u/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.42.0/bin

My question is this: do these 12 Config variables have the same value on all Perl installations? I guess there are actually 14 of these same vars, but the vendor values are blank on my system.

Here's a little script to check. I'd like to know if these can be different values so I know which one(s) to use. Thanks in advance.

#!/usr/bin/perl -l
# Check if all the bin and script dirs in %Config are the same.

use strict;
use warnings;
use Config;

@_ = qw/bin
binexp
initialinstalllocation
installbin
installscript
installsitebin
installsitescript
scriptdir
scriptdirexp
sitebin
sitebinexp
sitescript
sitescriptexp
vendorbin    
vendorbinexp/;

printf "%-24s  %-100s\n", $_, $Config{$_} for @_;
[download]

Output on my system:

bin                       /Users/u/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.42.0/bin                                                    
binexp                    /Users/u/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.42.0/bin                                                    
initialinstalllocation    /Users/u/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.42.0/bin                                                    
installbin                /Users/u/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.42.0/bin                                                    
installscript             /Users/u/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.42.0/bin                                                    
installsitebin            /Users/u/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.42.0/bin                                                    
installsitescript         /Users/u/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.42.0/bin                                                    
scriptdir                 /Users/u/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.42.0/bin                                                    
scriptdirexp              /Users/u/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.42.0/bin                                                    
sitebin                   /Users/u/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.42.0/bin                                                    
sitebinexp                /Users/u/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.42.0/bin                                                    
sitescript                /Users/u/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.42.0/bin                                                    
sitescriptexp             /Users/u/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.42.0/bin                                                    
vendorbin                                                                                                                     
vendorbinexp

Comment on perllocal EXE_FILES and %Config Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: perllocal EXE_FILES and %Config by marto (Cardinal) on May 08, 2026 at 12:44 UTC
Things listed in EXE_FILES will be copied to the INST_SCRIPT directory. To answer your question, no, they're not the same on all builds/configs. The defaults using the OS perl on CachyOS: perl -MConfig -e 'foreach (sort keys %Config) { print "$_ => $Config{$ +_}\n" if /bin\|script/ }' bin => /usr/bin bin_ELF => define binexp => /usr/bin d_vendorbin => define d_vendorscript => define installbin => /usr/bin installscript => /usr/bin/core_perl installsitebin => /usr/bin installsitescript => /usr/bin/site_perl installusrbinperl => installvendorbin => /usr/bin installvendorscript => /usr/bin/vendor_perl ld_can_script => define scriptdir => /usr/bin/core_perl scriptdirexp => /usr/bin/core_perl sitebin => /usr/bin sitebinexp => /usr/bin sitescript => /usr/bin/site_perl sitescriptexp => /usr/bin/site_perl vendorbin => /usr/bin vendorbinexp => /usr/bin vendorscript => /usr/bin/vendor_perl vendorscriptexp => /usr/bin/vendor_perl [download] You can specify where you want these exe files to be copied: `perl Makefile.PL INSTALLSCRIPT=/opt/mybin #cpanm cpanm --make-args "INSTALLSCRIPT=/opt/mybin" Module::Name` [download] You could use your perlbrew `configure` stage to specify different paths for your perl builds if desired.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: perllocal EXE_FILES and %Config by Anonymous Monk on May 08, 2026 at 18:37 UTC
Thank you marto! Your output is intriguing. It looks to me like your scripts from CPAN modules are probably all installed by default to /usr/bin/site_perl (sitescript) OR I guess possibly /usr/bin (sitebin). Assuming you have LWP installed what does "which lwp-request" say on your system? Is there one specific %Config var where cpan clients always put scripts regardless of what it says in EXE_FILES? Thanks for pointing out the options for INSTALLSCRIPT. I guess that throws a monkey wrench at the idea of reliably finding EXE_FILES in the %Config directories! I wonder if the value of perllocal EXE_FILES reflects a custom value for INSTALLSCRIPT? For example if you do this: cpanm --make-args "INSTALLSCRIPT=/opt/mybin" Module::Name Does perllocal look like this: EXE_FILES: /opt/mybin/module-name-script I woke up this morning are realized I could turn off perlbrew to check the values for system Perl on macos (v5.30.3): bin /usr/bin binexp /usr/bin initialinstalllocation /usr/bin installbin /usr/bin installscript /usr/bin installsitebin /usr/local/bin installsitescript /usr/local/bin scriptdir /usr/bin scriptdirexp /usr/bin sitebin /usr/local/bin sitebinexp /usr/local/bin sitescript /usr/local/bin sitescriptexp /usr/local/bin vendorbin /usr/local/bin vendorbinexp /usr/local/bin vendorscript /usr/local/bin vendorscriptexp /usr/local/bin PS - I missed vendorscript and vendorscriptexp in my test script: Read more... (667 Bytes)	[reply] [d/l]