man lib () - manipulate @INC at compile time

NAME

lib - manipulate @INC at compile time

SYNOPSIS

    use lib LIST;


    no lib LIST;

DESCRIPTION

This is a small simple module which simplifies the manipulation of CW@INC at compile time.

It is typically used to add extra directories to perl's search path so that later CWuse or CWrequire statements will find modules which are not located on perl's default search path. The parameters to CWuse lib are added to the start of the perl search path. Saying 

    use lib LIST;

is almost the same as saying 

    BEGIN { unshift(@INC, LIST) }

For each directory in LIST (called CW$dir here) the lib module also checks to see if a directory called CW$dir/$archname/auto exists. If so the CW$dir/$archname directory is assumed to be a corresponding architecture specific directory and is added to CW@INC in front of CW$dir.

To avoid memory leaks, all trailing duplicate entries in CW@INC are removed. You should normally only add directories to CW@INC. If you need to delete directories from CW@INC take care to only delete those which you added yourself or which you are certain are not needed by other modules in your script. Other modules may have added directories which they need for correct operation.

The CWno lib statement deletes all instances of each named directory from CW@INC.

For each directory in LIST (called CW$dir here) the lib module also checks to see if a directory called CW$dir/$archname/auto exists. If so the CW$dir/$archname directory is assumed to be a corresponding architecture specific directory and is also deleted from CW@INC. When the lib module is first loaded it records the current value of CW@INC in an array CW@lib::ORIG_INC. To restore CW@INC to that value you can say 

    @INC = @lib::ORIG_INC;

CAVEATS

In order to keep lib.pm small and simple, it only works with Unix filepaths. This doesn't mean it only works on Unix, but non-Unix users must first translate their file paths to Unix conventions. 

    # VMS users wanting to put [.stuff.moo] into 
    # their @INC would write
    use lib 'stuff/moo';

NOTES

In the future, this module will likely use File::Spec for determining paths, as it does now for Mac OS (where Unix-style or Mac-style paths work, and Unix-style paths are converted properly to Mac-style paths before being added to CW@INC).

SEE ALSO

FindBin - optional module which deals with paths relative to the source file.

AUTHOR

Tim Bunce, 2nd June 1995.