Basic - Perl5lib

[Anonymous Monk]

Dear Monks

I'm trying to understand the PERL5LIB environment variable and how it relates to multiple versions of Perl on the same machine

I have tried echoing the PERL5LIB variable and I get a blank line. Does that mean its empty? In other words, it doesn't have a default value and you have to set it manually? If you have multiple versions of Perl do they share the same PERL5LIB?

Thank-you in advance

[Khen1950fx]

PERL5LIB looks for modules in a private directory, for example, a development directory. If you want to use the modules in the development directory, then you can tell Perl to add the development directory to the front of @INC like this:

 export PERL5LIB=/home/uid/lib/perl5

[aquarium]

..and typically you'd set that environment variable so that all your processes/scripts had access to that additional module directory. otherwise just add an additional module directory directly in a perl script by pushing it onto @INC in a begin section. example for modules in specified directory and/or current directory

BEGIN {
  $my_module_dir = '~/myperl_modules/`;
  push(@INC, ('.',"$my_module_dir"));
}
  use mymodule;
...

oracle installs (and embedded) perl and it's own set of modules, and sets perl5lib. so not a good idea to modify perl5lib on oracle systems unless you really know what you're doing.

[dsheroh]

The more common way to add to @INC from within your program is with use lib. The following is equivalent to (more concise than) the code above:

use lib qw( . ~/myperl_modules/ );
use mymodule;

...except that use lib puts the extra dirs at the start of @INC (giving them precedence over system modules, which is normally what you want) while your use of push puts them at the end (giving system modules precedence, which is normally not what you want).

[Anonymous Monk]

Thanks for your replies. How can I set the PERL5LIB environment variable if I don't have one?

If I do manage to find my missing PERL5LIB, is it shared by all my Perl installations?

[ikegami]

If you have multiple versions of Perl do they share the same PERL5LIB?

Environment variables are inherited from the parent process.

In other words, it doesn't have a default value and you have to set it manually?

It depends on what you mean by default value. You could set it in your login script, for example.

[Anonymous Monk]

I don't have a PERL5LIB environment variable?? When i run env command it isn't in the list and I get nothing from this Perl program

#!/usr/bin/perl


print "PERL5LIB: ", $ENV{PERL5LIB}, "\n";
print "done\n";

[ikegami]

So you don't. Is that a question?

Perhaps you are missing the point of the variable: To specify additional locations to search for modules.

[toolic]

perl does not require that the PERL5LIB environment variable be set. Typically, the variable will not be set to any value.

One common usage scenario is to set the variable to a directory which contains Perl modules that you have developed.

[Anonymous Monk]

You also might be interested in seeing how perlbrew manages switching between different versions.

[Anonymous Monk]

I am worried about how the PERL5 LIB env variable affects different perl installations. I am presuming they share the same one. However I want to be sure that if I set the PERL5LIB for my local installation that it won't mess up the system installation. I want to include certain module versions for use by my local installation and I know if i set PERL5LIB it is prepended to the @INC array. Presumably this will affect my system installation too. I don't know if I can avoid this or whether it means I shouldn't use the PERL5LIB variable and I should use 'use lib' to modify the INC array.

[Anonymous Monk]

PERL5LIB affects perl processes (every perl process will use PERL5LIB), it doesn't affect installations