NAME¶
Module::Path - get the full path to a locally installed module
SYNOPSIS¶
use Module::Path 'module_path';
$path = module_path('Test::More');
if (defined($path)) {
print "Test::More found at $path\n";
} else {
print "Danger Will Robinson!\n";
}
DESCRIPTION¶
This module provides a single function, "module_path()", which takes a
module name and finds the first directory in your @INC path where the module
is installed locally. It returns the full path to that file, resolving any
symlinks. It is portable and only depends on core modules.
It works by looking in all the directories in @INC for an appropriately named
file:
- •
- Foo::Bar becomes "Foo/Bar.pm", using the correct directory path
separator for your operating system.
- •
- Iterate over @INC, ignoring any references (see "require" in
"perlfunc" if you're surprised to hear that you might find
references in @INC).
- •
- For each directory in @INC, append the partial path
("Foo/Bar.pm"), again using the correct directory path
separator. If the resulting file exists, return this path.
- •
- If a directory in @INC is a symlink, then we resolve the path, and return
a path containing the linked-to directory.
- •
- If no file was found, return "undef".
I wrote this module because I couldn't find an alternative which dealt with the
points listed above, and didn't pull in what seemed like too many dependencies
to me.
The distribution for "Module::Path" includes the "mpath"
script, which lets you get the path for a module from the command-line:
% mpath Module::Path
The "module_path()" function will also cope if the module name
includes ".pm"; this means you can pass a partial path, such as used
as the keys in %INC:
module_path('Test/More.pm') eq $INC{'Test/More.pm'}
The above is the basis for one of the tests.
BUGS¶
Obviously this only works where the module you're after has its own
".pm" file. If a file defines multiple packages, this won't work.
This also won't find any modules that are being loaded in some special way, for
example using a code reference in @INC, as described in "require" in
"perlfunc".
SEE ALSO¶
There are a number of other modules on CPAN which provide the same or similar
functionality: App::whichpm, Class::Inspector, Module::Data, Module::Filename,
Module::Finder, Module::Info, Module::Locate, Module::Mapper,
Module::Metadata, Module::Runtime, Module::Util, and Path::ScanINC.
I've written a review of all such modules that I'm aware of:
Module::Path was written to be fast, portable, and have a low number of
core-only runtime dependencies. It you only want to look up the path to a
module, it's a good choice.
If you want more information, such as the module's version, what functions are
provided, etc, then start by looking at Module::Info, Module::Metadata, and
Class::Inspector.
The following scripts can also give you the path: perldoc, whichpm
<
https://www.metacpan.org/module/whichpm>.
REPOSITORY¶
<
https://github.com/neilbowers/Module-Path>
AUTHOR¶
Neil Bowers <neilb@cpan.org>
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE¶
This software is copyright (c) 2012 by Neil Bowers <neilb@cpan.org>.
This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.