Config - access Perl configuration information
use Config; if ($Config{'cc'} =~ /gcc/) { print "built by gcc\n"; } use Config qw(myconfig config_sh config_vars); print myconfig(); print config_sh(); config_vars(qw(osname archname));
The Config module contains all the information that was available to the Configure program at Perl build time (over 900 values).
Configure
Shell variables from the config.sh file (written by Configure) are stored in the readonly-variable %Config, indexed by their names.
%Config
Values stored in config.sh as 'undef' are returned as undefined values. The perl exists function can be used to check if a named variable exists.
exists
Returns a textual summary of the major perl configuration values. See also -V in "Switches" in perlrun.
-V
Returns the entire perl configuration information in the form of the original config.sh shell variable assignment script.
Prints to STDOUT the values of the named configuration variable. Each is printed on a separate line in the form:
name='value';
Names which are unknown are output as name='UNKNOWN';. See also -V:name in "Switches" in perlrun.
name='UNKNOWN';
-V:name
Here's a more sophisticated example of using %Config:
use Config; use strict; my %sig_num; my @sig_name; unless($Config{sig_name} && $Config{sig_num}) { die "No sigs?"; } else { my @names = split ' ', $Config{sig_name}; @sig_num{@names} = split ' ', $Config{sig_num}; foreach (@names) { $sig_name[$sig_num{$_}] ||= $_; } } print "signal #17 = $sig_name[17]\n"; if ($sig_num{ALRM}) { print "SIGALRM is $sig_num{ALRM}\n"; }
Because this information is not stored within the perl executable itself it is possible (but unlikely) that the information does not relate to the actual perl binary which is being used to access it.
The Config module is installed into the architecture and version specific library directory ($Config{installarchlib}) and it checks the perl version number when loaded.
This module contains a good example of how to use tie to implement a cache and an example of how to make a tied variable readonly to those outside of it.
To install lib, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm
cpanm lib
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell install lib
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.