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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-24T14:08:35+00:00

I thought I remember reading somewhere about where perl can be configured to automatically

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I thought I remember reading somewhere about where perl can be configured to automatically load a certain .pm file on start up.

I know about PERL5OPT, but to my recollection, this was a specific file that would be loaded if it exists.

Is it a compile option that can be set (i.e. via Configure)?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Reading through perldoc perlrun it looks like you are looking for what is talked about in the -f option:

    -f

    Disable executing $Config{sitelib}/sitecustomize.pl at startup.

    Perl can be built so that it by default will try to execute
    $Config{sitelib}/sitecustomize.pl at startup (in a BEGIN block). This
    is a hook that allows the sysadmin to customize how Perl behaves. It
    can for instance be used to add entries to the @INC array to make Perl
    find modules in non-standard locations.

    Perl actually inserts the following code:

    BEGIN {
do { local $!; -f "$Config{sitelib}/sitecustomize.pl"; }
&& do "$Config{sitelib}/sitecustomize.pl";
}

    Since it is an actual do (not a require), sitecustomize.pl doesn’t
    need to return a true value. The code is run in package main , in its
    own lexical scope. However, if the script dies, $@ will not be set.

    The value of $Config{sitelib} is also determined in C code and not
    read from Config.pm , which is not loaded.

    The code is executed very early. For example, any changes made to @INC
    will show up in the output of perl -V. Of course, END blocks will be
    likewise executed very late.

    To determine at runtime if this capability has been compiled in your
    perl, you can check the value of $Config{usesitecustomize} .

    I’ve never done this, but it looks like if you put what you want in $Config{sitelib}/sitecustomize.pl you’ll get what you are looking for.

    See:

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