in reply to Absolute pathnames from relative?

Have you looked at FindBin ? perldoc FindBin.
SYNOPSIS
        use FindBin;
        use lib "$FindBin::Bin/../lib";
        or
        use FindBin qw($Bin);
        use lib "$Bin/../lib";
DESCRIPTION
       Locates the full path to the script bin directory to allow
       the use of paths relative to the bin directory.