http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=967290

voj has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi, I'd like a script to look for a config file first in the current directory then in the parent directory until the root directory and if no config file was found in the home directory. This does not look difficult, unless you want the code to run under different Operating Systems and settings. For instance / is not always the directory separator and the root directory. Here is the current code:
use File::Spec::Functions;
use File::Basename;
use Cwd;

sub find_config {
    my $path = cwd;
    while ($path) {
        my $file = catfile($path,'my.conf');
        return $file if -e $file;
        last if $path eq dirname($path);
        $path = dirname($path);
    }
    my ($login) = getpwuid($<);
    my $file = catdir('/home',$login,'my.conf');
    return -e $file ? $file : '';
}
I was wondering whether there already is a reliable implementation in some CPAN module, that also deals with all these different file systems. I bet my code fails under some unknown special circumstances...