This is pretty weird, but I think I've figured it out;

doing a,

 
print __FILE__;
[download]

inside my module will return something like:

 
/lib/Stuff/Template.pm

File::Spec has a method called, file_name_is_absolute(), which basically on Unix, looks for a '/' as the first character ->

 
sub file_name_is_absolute {
    my ($self,$file) = @_;
    return scalar($file =~ m:^/:s);
}
[download]

File::Spec will consult this method before it tries to piece together a absolute path; thus, File::Spec isn't even attempting to make an absolute path from the information from __FILE__

The workaround I've done is simply to hack the first, '/' off.

Changing my FOO.pm to something like:

 
package FOO; 
use File::Spec;

require Exporter; 
@ISA = qw(Exporter); 
@EXPORT = qw(bar); 

sub bar { 
    print __FILE__; 
    print '<p>';
    print File::Spec->rel2abs(__FILE__) . "\n";
}


1;
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Will print:

lib/FOO.pm

/usr/home/user/www/cgi-bin/lib/FOO.pm

So, it doesn't look like it's *really* File::Spec's fault, but what would cause Perl to put a '/' at the beginning of the path in my module?

Hmm...