Re: Logging module sometimes writes its file in the wrong directory

I don't even know where to start looking for this bug,
It's opening in the "wrong" place, so let's start with the open call:

open(LOG, ">>$dir/$log_file") or croak "Unable to append to error log:
+ $!";
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So it uses $dir .. now to see where that's set, which is in BEGIN .. and has this snippet:

    $0 =~ '(.*[\\\/])\w+\.\w+$'; 
    $dir = $1;
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Several important items here:

never use $1 w/o checking that the match actually succeeded .. if you don't, you'll get unexpected values.
```
  $dir = $1 if $0 =~ m#/.*[\\/])\w+\.\w+$#;
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```
$0 is the program being run, so this is setting $dir to that path. Thus why that's where the log file is being opened.
Use something like File::Basename to parse the path instead of a regex. For example, if the script is /usr/local/bin/foo (instead of foo.pl) then your regex fails.
```
use File::Basename;
$dir = dirname($0);
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```

Comment on Re: Logging module sometimes writes its file in the wrong directory Select or Download Code

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Re^2: Logging module sometimes writes its file in the wrong directory by Anonymous Monk on May 03, 2006 at 16:55 UTC
Do you think that I should just get rid of the `BEGIN { if ($::dir) { $dir = $::dir; } else { $0 =~ '(.*[\\\/])\w+\.\w+$'; $dir = $1; } }` [download] And just use `use File::Basename; my $dir = dirname($0);` [download] in the module?	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: Logging module sometimes writes its file in the wrong directory by CountOrlok (Friar) on May 03, 2006 at 17:33 UTC
If you want to use the directory where your script is, then yes. You can also use: `use FindBin qw($Bin); my $dir = $Bin;` [download] -imran Update: if you want to open the file in the current directory that you are in, don't use $dir, just do open with the filename. This is unless a chdir was done.	[reply] [d/l]