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CONTENTS

NAME

FindBin - Locate directory of original Perl script

SYNOPSIS

use FindBin;
use lib "$FindBin::Bin/../lib";

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 or $Dir

Path to the bin directory from where script was invoked

$Script

Basename of the script from which perl was invoked

$RealBin or $RealDir

$Bin with all links resolved

$RealScript

$Script with all links resolved

You can also use the ALL tag to export all of the above variables together:

use FindBin ':ALL';

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. Call the again function to make sure that FindBin will work:

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;

AUTHORS

FindBin is supported as part of the core perl distribution. Please submit bug reports at https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues.

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

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 1995 Graham Barr & Nick Ing-Simmons. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.