Does anyone know if it possible to change the @INC path after installation of Perl?

I know I can use environment variables, but these are limited to single-user logons - and I can use -I flags, but this is limited to individual scripts; I'm really looking for a global change that will add my own directory (somewhere under /opt probably) to the include path.

Does anyone know more than me? And just out of interest, where is @INC stored anyway?

Many thanks for your help,

Robert J. Lee

OK; I've found the answer, and it looks like I can't.

@INC is set at configure time, and hard-coded into the /usr/bin/perl binary (although it seems that the Windows version derives at least one path from the installed location of the program).

@INC gets appended to by the PERLLIB and PERL5LIB environment variables, the -I<path> command-line option to perl, and the "use lib <path>;" perl instruction (which is the same as "BEGIN { unshift @INC, <path>; }")

Dynamicly changing the include path is on the wish-list, but isn't yet implemented.

You can change @INC by modifying /usr/bin/perl with a hex-editor, but that'll only work if you do not want to make the paths longer or add new ones.

Source: http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=9883