How do I "use" a Perl module in a directory not in @INC?

There are several ways you can modify @INC.

  • set PERL5LIB, as documented in perlrun

  • use the -I switch on the command line, also documented in perlrun. You can also apply this automatically with PERL5OPT, but just use PERL5LIB if you are going to do that.

  • use lib inside your program, although this is fragile since another person on a different machine might have it in a different directory.

  • Manually modify @INC, making sure you do that at compile time if you want to pull in a module with use. That's too much work though.

  • require the filename directly. While this is possible, it doesn't allow that filename to load files in the same directory. This would definitely raise eyebrows in a code review.


use takes place at compile-time, so this would work:

BEGIN {push @INC, '..'}
use EPMS;

But the better solution is to use lib, which is a nicer way of writing the above:

use lib '..';
use EPMS;

In case you are running from a different directory, though, the use of FindBin is recommended:

use FindBin;                     # locate this script
use lib "$FindBin::RealBin/..";  # use the parent directory
use EPMS;