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

Module::Path provides a single function, module_path(), which will find where a module is installed locally.

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 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

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. But many of them provide a lot of other things, and/or they have a number of non-core dependencies. Or they're not as robust. The following is a list of the ones I'm currently aware of.

Module::Filename

Provides an OO interface, with a single method filename(), which provides the same mapping as Module::Path. Uses Path::Class to ensure portable handling of directory paths.

Module::Metadata

Class which provides various ways to find a module, and can then report the version and other things beyond the path.

Module::Info

Another class which can give you a lot of information about a module, without having to load it.

Module::Locate

A collection of utility functions for getting information about a module's path, and source, amongst other things.

Module::Data

A class which can provide information about a module, similar to Module::Info, but not as much information.

Module::Finder

A class for finding and querying modules. This is very slow, so if you're just after the path, don't use this module.

Module::Util

A collection of functions for handling module names and paths.

App::whichpm, App::Module::Locate, App::moduleswhere

Apps for accessing module information, which include the path.

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.