Update: see post Re^3: Perl Script own path with some more test data between Linux and Windows. Jim spurred some more testing and I now think that Cwd::abs_path($0) is the way to go to get full path name with the caveat that you cannot do any chdir() function before calling this.

In Perl, the automatic variable $0 in some operating systems gives the full path of the currently executing Perl script. In others you just get the name of the file that is executing. The module Cwd will give you the "current working directory". Just see attached code... executed on a Windows 32 bit XP system and a 64 bit Linux system. The combination of basename() and cwd() will always work on all OS'es.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

use File::Basename;
use Cwd;

print "dollar 0 is $0\n";
print basename($0), "\n";
print "current working directory is: ",cwd(),"\n";

__END__
On Windows, you get:
  dollar 0 is C:\TEMP\exename.pl
  exename.pl
  current working directory is: C:/TEMP

On Linux, you get:
   dollar 0 is ./exename.pl
   exename.pl
   current working directory is: /home/xxx/yy

[download]
Moral of the story:
-basename($0) gives the name of the Perl script that is running.
-cwd() gives the current path
-concatenate the result of cwd() and basename($0) with intervening "/" to get the full path of the script in a OS independent way.

Update: Note the Windows cwd() results in "C:/TEMP"! Windows allows the use of the forward-slash ('/') in almost all situations. There is a situation where that is not true (the backslash '\' is required), but I can't remember at the moment what that is. Some Monk will probably enlighten us. My main point is that '/' almost always works to join paths on Windows.

In reply to Re: Perl Script own path by Marshall
in thread Perl Script own path by muzammil18

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