How do I add a directory to my include path at runtime? Here are the suggested ways of modifying your include path: the PERLLIB environment variable the PERL5LIB environment variable the perl -Idir command line flag the use lib pragma, as in use lib "$ENV{HOME}/myown_perllib"; The latter is particularly useful because it knows about machine dependent architectures. The lib.pm pragmatic module was first included with the 5.002 release of Perl.