Perl Can't Locate File.pl in @INC

Overview

In Perl 5.26 and later, the current directory (.) is removed from @INC by default for security reasons. As a result code such as the following will no longer work:

require "File.pl";

Error message

The error message you’ll see is as follows:

Can't locate File.pl in @INC (@INC contains: /usr/local/lib64/perl5 /usr/local/share/perl5 /usr/lib64/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/lib64/perl5 /usr/share/perl5) at /home/username/public_html/cgi-bin/my_script.pl line 20.

Solution

To include a module from the same directory as your script, the two easiest approaches are:

1. Use the FindBin module:

use FindBin; use lib $FindBin::RealBin;

Place that before your require statements.

2. Use explicit path for the file

require "./File.pl";