Module::Path - get the full path to a locally installed module
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"; }
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.
module_path()
@INC
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.
Foo/Bar.pm
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.
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:
Module::Path
mpath
% 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:
.pm
%INC
module_path('Test/More.pm') eq $INC{'Test/More.pm'}
The above is the basis for one of the tests.
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".
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:
http://neilb.org/reviews/module-path.html
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://github.com/neilbowers/Module-Path
Neil Bowers <neilb@cpan.org>
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.
To install Module::Path, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm
cpanm Module::Path
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell install Module::Path
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.