Directory of PM file

[tomazos]

How can you get a handle on the directory that a module is located in from within that module's code?

Lets say you have to write a module called Module.pm and you don't know where it will be installed, or which scripts it will be used by, but you know that in the modules parent directory there are some (grep "../*.foo") files you want to process.

Trouble is that grep is going to be relative to the current directory which is not necessarily the modules directory. To go relative to the module you need to be able to find out where it is.

Is that possible?

-Andrew.

[sh1tn]

You may find useful Re^2: finding the absolute path to a module, from the module's, perspective.

[bart]

How can you get a handle on the directory that a module is located in from within that module's code?

Try __FILE__. See perldata, section "special literals". Drop the file's basename from that string, possibly using File::Basename.

A test revealed that this can produce a relative path; rel2abs() from File::Spec::Functions can remedy that.

For example, test module Foo.pm:

package Foo;
use File::Spec::Functions qw(rel2abs);
use File::Basename;
my $dir = (fileparse(rel2abs(__FILE__)))[1];

print "Foo directory: $dir\n";
1;

IMO it's safest to indeed set a variable with this directory in the top level of the module, as I do here, so it always gets set when the module is loaded.

[EvanCarroll]

I would assume you could use $INC{$0} or such from within the script. Methods in File::Spec might be of assist.