How do I include a Perl module that's in a different directory?

Question

How do I include a Perl module that's in a different directory? It needs to be a relative path from the module that's including it.

I've tried

push ( @INC,"directory_path/more_path");

also

push ( @INC,"directory_path\\more_path");

Thank you!

Answer 1

'use lib' can also take a single string value...

#!/usr/bin/perl
use lib '<relative-path>';
use <your lib>;

Answer 2

EDIT: Putting the right solution first, originally from this question. It's the only one that searches relative to the module directory:

use FindBin;                 # locate this script
use lib "$FindBin::Bin/..";  # use the parent directory
use yourlib;

There's many other ways that search for libraries relative to the current directory. You can invoke perl with the -I argument, passing the directory of the other module:

perl -I.. yourscript.pl

You can include a line near the top of your perl script:

use lib '..';

You can modify the environment variable PERL5LIB before you run the script:

export PERL5LIB=$PERL5LIB:..

The push(@INC) strategy can also work, but it has to be wrapped in BEGIN{} to make sure that the push is run before the module search:

BEGIN {push @INC, '..'}
use yourlib;

Answer 3

Most likely the reason your push did not work is order of execution.

use is a compile time directive. You push is done at execution time:

push ( @INC,"directory_path/more_path");
use Foo.pm;  # In directory path/more_path

You can use a BEGIN block to get around this problem:

BEGIN {
    push ( @INC,"directory_path/more_path");
}
use Foo.pm;  # In directory path/more_path

IMO, it's clearest, and therefore best to use lib:

use lib "directory_path/more_path";
use Foo.pm;  # In directory path/more_path

See perlmod for information about BEGIN and other special blocks and when they execute.

Answer 4

From perlfaq8:

---

How do I add the directory my program lives in to the module/library search path?

(contributed by brian d foy)

If you know the directory already, you can add it to @INC as you would for any other directory. You might use lib if you know the directory at compile time:

use lib $directory;

The trick in this task is to find the directory. Before your script does anything else (such as a chdir), you can get the current working directory with the Cwd module, which comes with Perl:

BEGIN {
 use Cwd;
 our $directory = cwd;
 }

use lib $directory;

You can do a similar thing with the value of $0, which holds the script name. That might hold a relative path, but rel2abs can turn it into an absolute path. Once you have the

BEGIN {
 use File::Spec::Functions qw(rel2abs);
 use File::Basename qw(dirname);

 my $path   = rel2abs( $0 );
 our $directory = dirname( $path );
 }

use lib $directory;

The FindBin module, which comes with Perl, might work. It finds the directory of the currently running script and puts it in $Bin, which you can then use to construct the right library path:

use FindBin qw($Bin);