Setting environment variable to shell executed from perl script

I suspect that the Perl program is either modifying the path it gets from the shell that invokes it, or that you have left out a step somewhere. For example, if you invoke the Perl program from a different environment, it will likely have a different PATH.

You seemed to have found your answer though. Add the necessary directory to the PATH in the Perl program. But, you say this doesn't work. Again, I think there's some step that you haven't included. I suspect that the way in which you run system overwrites the PATH inherited from the parent.

For example, here's a small Perl program the merely runs a shell script:

#!perl
use v5.10;

$ENV{PATH} = '/bin:/usr/bin';

say "PATH in Perl is $ENV{PATH}";
system( "sh ./pather.sh" );

The shell script echos the PATH:

#!/bin/sh

echo "PATH in shell:" $PATH

When I run this, both PATHs match:

PATH in Perl is /bin:/usr/bin
PATH in shell: /bin:/usr/bin

But, maybe the command in system is something else. The -l switch treats the shell as a login shell, so it will load the various profiles and whatnot:

system( "sh -l ./pather.sh" );

Now the PATH is different in the shell script because my particular profiles overwrote PATH:

PATH in Perl is /bin:/usr/bin
Path in shell: /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/Library/TeX/texbin:/usr/local/go/bin:...

Our answers can be more targeted you can produce a minimal working example where we see actual code that demonstrates the problem. Since we don't see what you actually run in system, we can only guess.