100% agree with this! And Getopt::Long is extremely easy:

use 5.026000;
use warnings;

use Getopt::Long;
GetOptions (
    "B|before=i" => \my $before, # An integer argument is required
    ) or die "User-friendly message\n");
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And if you want -B without any argument to default to say 42, all you have to change is

GetOptions (
    "B|before:42" => \my $before, # An integer argument is optional an
+d defaults to 42 when -B used without arg
    ) or die "User-friendly message\n");
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One step further: set a default, and also give a different default for -B without argument

GetOptions (
    "B|before:42" => \(my $before = 2),
    ) or die "User-friendly message\n");
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In the first two examples $before will have the value undef when the option -B is not given at all. In the last example the default will be 2.