How do I "use" a Perl module in a directory not in @INC?

Question

I have a module in the parent directory of my script and I would like to 'use' it.

If I do

use '../Foo.pm'; 

I get syntax errors.

I tried to do:

push @INC, '..'; use EPMS; 

and .. apparently doesn't show up in @INC

I'm going crazy! What's wrong here?

Answer 1

use takes place at compile-time, so this would work:

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

But the better solution is to use lib, which is a nicer way of writing the above:

use lib '..'; use EPMS; 

In case you are running from a different directory, though, the use of FindBin is recommended:

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

Answer 2

There are several ways you can modify @INC.

• set PERL5LIB, as documented in perlrun

• use the -I switch on the command line, also documented in perlrun. You can also apply this automatically with PERL5OPT, but just use PERL5LIB if you are going to do that.

• use lib inside your program, although this is fragile since another person on a different machine might have it in a different directory.

• Manually modify @INC, making sure you do that at compile time if you want to pull in a module with use. That's too much work though.

• require the filename directly. While this is possible, it doesn't allow that filename to load files in the same directory. This would definitely raise eyebrows in a code review.