How do I get the full path to a Perl script that is executing?

Question

I have Perl script and need to determine the full path and filename of the script during execution. I discovered that depending on how you call the script $0 varies and sometimes contains the fullpath+filename and sometimes just filename. Because the working directory can vary as well I can't think of a way to reliably get the fullpath+filename of the script.

Anyone got a solution?

Answer 1

On *nix, you likely have the "whereis" command, which searches your $PATH looking for a binary with a given name. If $0 doesn't contain the full path name, running whereis $scriptname and saving the result into a variable should tell you where the script is located.

Answer 2

$0 is typically the name of your program, so how about this?

use Cwd 'abs_path';
print abs_path($0);

Seems to me that this should work as abs_path knows if you are using a relative or absolute path.

Answer 3

Have you tried:

$ENV{'SCRIPT_NAME'}

or

use FindBin '$Bin';
print "The script is located in $Bin.\n";

It really depends on how it's being called and if it's CGI or being run from a normal shell, etc.

Answer 4

I think the module you're looking for is FindBin:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use FindBin;

$0 = "stealth";
print "The actual path to this is: $FindBin::Bin/$FindBin::Script\n";

Answer 5

You could use FindBin, Cwd, File::Basename, or a combination of them. They're all in the base distribution of Perl IIRC.

I used Cwd in the past:

Cwd:

use Cwd qw(abs_path);
my $path = abs_path($0);
print "$path\n";

Answer 6

Use File::Spec; File::Spec->rel2abs( __FILE__ );

http://perldoc.perl.org/File/Spec/Unix.html

Answer 7

perlfaq8 answers a very similar question with using the rel2abs() function on $0. That function can be found in File::Spec.

Answer 8

Some short background:

Unfortunately the Unix API doesn't provide a running program with the full path to the executable. In fact, the program executing yours can provide whatever it wants in the field that normally tells your program what it is. There are, as all the answers point out, various heuristics for finding likely candidates. But nothing short of searching the entire filesystem will always work, and even that will fail if the executable is moved or removed.

But you don't want the Perl executable, which is what's actually running, but the script it is executing. And Perl needs to know where the script is to find it. It stores this in __FILE__, while $0 is from the Unix API. This can still be a relative path, so take Mark's suggestion and canonize it with File::Spec->rel2abs( __FILE__ );

Answer 9

Although I haven't personally experienced it, it seems that FindBin is broken and though rel2abs( $0 ) can fail, it will at least fail reliably.

Answer 10

There are a few ways:

• $0 is the currently executing script as provided by POSIX, relative to the current working directory if the script is at or below the CWD
• Additionally, cwd(), getcwd() and abs_path() are provided by the Cwd module and tell you where the script is being run from
• The module FindBin provides the $Bin & $RealBin variables that usually are the path to the executing script; this module also provides $Script & $RealScript that are the name of the script
• __FILE__ is the actual file that the Perl interpreter deals with during compilation, including its full path.

I've seen the first three ($0, the Cwd module and the FindBin module) fail under mod_perl spectacularly, producing worthless output such as '.' or an empty string. In such environments, I use __FILE__ and get the path from that using the File::Basename module:

use File::Basename;
my $dirname = basename(__FILE__);

Answer 11

Getting the absolute path to $0 or __FILE__ is what you want. The only trouble is if someone did a chdir() and the $0 was relative -- then you need to get the absolute path in a BEGIN{} to prevent any surprises.

FindBin tries to go one better and grovel around in the $PATH for something matching the basename($0), but there are times when that does far-too-surprising things (specifically: when the file is "right in front of you" in the cwd.)

File::Fu has File::Fu->program_name and File::Fu->program_dir for this.