findbin(3) - Linux man page

Name

FindBin - Locate directory of original perl script

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.

This allows a user to setup a directory tree for some software with directories "<root>/bin" and "<root>/lib", and then the above example will allow the use of modules in the lib directory without knowing where the software tree is installed.

If perl is invoked using the -e option or the perl script is read from "STDIN" then FindBin sets both $Bin and $RealBin to the current directory.

Exportable Variables

$Bin         - path to bin directory from where script was invoked
$Script      - basename of script from which perl was invoked
$RealBin     - $Bin with all links resolved
$RealScript  - $Script with all links resolved

Known Issues

If there are two modules using "FindBin" from different directories under the same interpreter, this won't work. Since "FindBin" uses a "BEGIN" block, it'll be executed only once, and only the first caller will get it right. This is a problem under mod_perl and other persistent Perl environments, where you shouldn't use this module. Which also means that you should avoid using "FindBin" in modules that you plan to put on CPAN . To make sure that "FindBin" will work is to call the "again" function:

use FindBin;
FindBin::again(); # or FindBin->again;

In former versions of FindBin there was no "again" function. The workaround was to force the "BEGIN" block to be executed again:

delete $INC{'FindBin.pm'};
require FindBin;

Known Bugs

If perl is invoked as

perl filename

and filename does not have executable rights and a program called filename exists in the users $ENV{PATH} which satisfies both -x and -T then FindBin assumes that it was invoked via the $ENV{PATH}.

Workaround is to invoke perl as

perl ./filename

Authors

FindBin is supported as part of the core perl distribution. Please send bug reports to <perlbug@perl.org> using the perlbug program included with perl.

Graham Barr <gbarr@pobox.com> Nick Ing-Simmons <nik@tiuk.ti.com>