Find(3p)

NAME
Module::Find - Find and use installed modules in a (sub)category

SYNOPSIS
  use Module::Find;

  # use all modules in the Plugins/ directory
  @found = usesub Mysoft::Plugins;

  # use modules in all subdirectories
  @found = useall Mysoft::Plugins;

  # find all DBI::... modules
  @found = findsubmod DBI;

  # find anything in the CGI/ directory
  @found = findallmod CGI;

  # set your own search dirs (uses @INC otherwise)
  setmoduledirs(@INC, @plugindirs, $appdir);

  # not exported by default
  use Module::Find qw(ignoresymlinks followsymlinks);

  # ignore symlinks
  ignoresymlinks();

  # follow symlinks (default)
  followsymlinks();

DESCRIPTION
Module::Find lets you find and use modules in categories. This can be very useful for auto-detecting driver or plugin modules. You can differentiate between looking in the category itself or in all subcategories.

If you want Module::Find to search in a certain directory on your harddisk (such as the plugins directory of your software installation), make sure you modify @INC before you call the Module::Find functions.

FUNCTIONS

setmoduledirs(@directories)
    Sets the directories to be searched for modules. If not set, Module::Find will use @INC. If you use this function, @INC will not be included automatically, so add it if you want it. Set to undef to revert to default behaviour.

"@found = findsubmod Module::Category"
    Returns modules found in the Module/Category subdirectories of your perl installation. E.g. "findsubmod CGI" will return "CGI::Session", but not "CGI::Session::File" .

"@found = findallmod Module::Category"
    Returns modules found in the Module/Category subdirectories of your perl installation. E.g. "findallmod CGI" will return "CGI::Session" and also "CGI::Session::File" .

"@found = usesub Module::Category"
    Uses and returns modules found in the Module/Category subdirectories of your perl installation. E.g. "usesub CGI" will return "CGI::Session", but not "CGI::Session::File" .

    If any module dies during loading, usesub will also die at this point.

"@found = useall Module::Category"
    Uses and returns modules found in the Module/Category subdirectories of your perl installation. E.g. "useall CGI" will return "CGI::Session" and also "CGI::Session::File" .

    If any module dies during loading, useall will also die at this point.

ignoresymlinks()
    Do not follow symlinks. This function is not exported by default.

followsymlinks()
    Follow symlinks (default behaviour). This function is not exported by default.

HISTORY

0.01, 2004-04-22
    Original version; created by h2xs 1.22

0.02, 2004-05-25
    Added test modules that were left out in the first version. Thanks to Stuart Johnston for alerting me to this.

0.03, 2004-06-18
    Fixed a bug (non-localized $_) by declaring a loop variable in use functions. Thanks to Stuart Johnston for alerting me to this and providing a fix.

    Fixed non-platform compatibility by using File::Spec. Thanks to brian d foy.

    Added setmoduledirs and updated tests. Idea shamelessly stolen from ...errm... inspired by brian d foy.

0.04, 2005-05-20
    Added POD tests.

0.05, 2005-11-30
    Fixed issue with bugfix in PathTools-3.14.

0.06, 2008-01-26
    Module::Find now won't report duplicate modules several times anymore (thanks to Uwe Völker for the report and the patch)

0.07, 2009-09-08
    Fixed RT#38302: Module::Find now follows symlinks by default (can be disabled).

0.08, 2009-09-08
    Fixed RT#49511: Removed Mac OS X extended attributes from distribution

0.09, 2010-02-26
    Fixed RT#38302: Fixed META.yml generation (thanks very much to cpanservice for the help).

0.10, 2010-02-26
    Fixed RT#55010: Removed Unicode BOM from Find.pm.

0.11, 2012-05-22
    Fixed RT#74251: defined(@array) is deprecated under Perl 5.15.7. Thanks to Roman F, who contributed the implementation.

0.12, 2014-02-08
    Fixed RT#81077: useall fails in taint mode Thanks to Aran Deltac, who contributed the implementation and test.

    Fixed RT#83596: Documentation doesn't describe behaviour if a module fails to load Clarified documentation for useall and usesub.

    Fixed RT#62923: setmoduledirs(undef) doesn't reset to searching @INC Added more explicit tests. Thanks to Colin Robertson for his input.

0.13, 2015-03-09
    This release contains two contributions from Moritz Lenz:

    Link to Module::Pluggable and Class::Factory::Util in "SEE ALSO"

    Align package name parsing with how perl does it (allowing single quotes as module separator)

    Also, added a test for meta.yml

0.14, 2019-12-25
    A long overdue update. Thank you for the many contributions!

    Fixed RT#99055: Removed file readability check (pull request contributed by Moritz Lenz)

    Now supports @INC hooks (pull request contributed by Graham Knop)

    Now filters out filenames starting with a dot (pull request contributed by Desmond Daignault)

    Now uses strict (pull request contributed by Shlomi Fish)

    Fixed RT#122016: test/ files show up in metacpan (bug report contributed by Karen Etheridge)

0.15, 2019-12-26
    Fixed RT#127657 (bug report contributed by Karen Etheridge): Module::Find now uses @ModuleDirs (if specified) for loading modules. Previously, when using setmoduledirs() to set an array of directories that did not contain @INC, Module::Find would find the modules correctly, but load them from @INC.

0.16, 2022-08-01
    Fixes an issue where symlink tests failed on systems that do not support creation of symlinks. The issue appears on Windows systems due to changed behaviour in "File::Find" described in perl5/issue #19995 <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/19995> Symlink tests were previously skipped if symlink() is not available, and now also if creation of a symlink is not possible.

    Fixes issue #9 <https://github.com/crenz/Module-Find/issues/9>. Note that on Windows system, the patch to "File::Find" from perl5/PR #20008 <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/pull/20008> will be required for proper operation.

0.17, 2025-02-16
    Fixes issue 13 <https://github.com/crenz/Module-Find/issues/13> / 148978 <https://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=148978> where warnings where produced upon extracting the installation archive, which prevented installation under cpanm and other tools.

DEVELOPMENT NOTES
The development repository for this module is hosted on GitHub: <http://github.com/crenz/Module-Find/>. Please report any bugs by opening an issue there.

SEE ALSO
perl, Module::Pluggable, Class::Factory::Util

AUTHOR
Christian Renz, <crenz@web42.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
Copyright 2004-2025 by Christian Renz <crenz@web42.com>. All rights reserved.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.