pp (PAR-Packer) - how to access included data files

[ibm1620]

I'm trying to use pp to build an executable that contains a data file from which it reads.

Here's the command I'm using:

pp -v=3 -a /Users/chap/private/dict/lex.dict -o ppdir/brillig brillig

Verbose output includes the line:

adding /Users/chap/private/dict/lex.dict as Users/chap/private/dict/lex.dict

The pp documentation of the -a switch is as follows:

-a, --addfile=FILE|DIR Add an extra file into the package. If the file is a directory, recursively add all files inside that directory, with links turned into actual files.

By default, files are placed under / inside the package with their original names. You may override this by appending the target filename after a ; like this: % pp -a "old_filename.txt;new_filename.txt"

I don't understand the bolded sentence. What path should my Perl code use to access lex.dict?

Thanks!

[marto]

Re: pp macOS external file.

[bliako]

see Re: Par::Packer and paths

[swl]

The post linked to by marto has a good example of checking if running under PAR and then accessing the file accordingly.

More details about the environment variables used by PAR can be seen at https://metacpan.org/dist/PAR/view/lib/PAR/Environment.pod.

[ibm1620]

I wasn't really clear about the use of PAR_TEMP, given the advice not to use it in https://metacpan.org/dist/PAR/view/lib/PAR/Environment.pod .

I finally figured out that "/", which the doc says is the root under which included files are stored, could be computed at runtime by dirname($ENV{PAR_0}) . "/inc".

[bliako]

dirname($ENV{PAR_0}) . "/inc".

Why you want to go low level when you have this? :

# PAR::read_file() returns a file inside any loaded PARs
my $conf = PAR::read_file('data/MyConfig.yaml');

(from SYNOPSIS)

[swl]

The docs could be a bit clearer but my reading is that PAR_TEMP should not be assigned to but is fine to read from.

Your approach will still work, though.

[sectokia]

If you want to get the contents of the file simply do this in your pl program:

use PAR;
my $fileData = PAR::read_file('lex.dict');

I believe this is the only real guaranteed way to get the file data. All other ways would be assuming things about how par unpacks and/or uses temp files, and/or enviroment variables, which are subject to change.