Getopt Behavior

gaspodethewonderdog has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I've been looking through the Getopt::Long perlman page and Getopt::Std perlman page as well and haven't come to the answer I want. That either means that what I want to do is impossible with Getopt or I'm looking in the wrong place altogether.

What I want to do is have a command line driven program that can take multiple inputs for a given id and process them. What I sort of want to do is:

use Getopt::Long;
use strict;

use vars qw/@opt_id/;

GetOptions("id=s@");

print join "|", @opt_id;
[download]

However I want the id field to be an array delimited by spaces... I want the user to type "<command> -id element1 element2 -status abc" and not "<command> -id element1 -id element2 -status abc". Is there a way to put Getopt into a mode to do this? Can somebody throw me a bone here?

Comment on Getopt Behavior Download Code

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Re: Getopt Behavior by Fastolfe (Vicar) on Dec 05, 2000 at 23:56 UTC
Note that this is a non-standard way of doing command line options. That's why Getopt::Long is having trouble recognizing what you want to do. You may have better luck changing the syntax of your script so that it supports something like this: `$ script --id="1.0.0.1 1.0.0.2 1.0.0.3" # split the resulting variable on spaces $ cat >id.dat 1.0.0.1 1.0.0.2 1.0.0.3 $ script --id=@id.dat` [download] In addition, if your script takes no "filename"-like arguments (arguments not preceeded by an option), consider making IP addresses an optional argument in this respect: `Usage: script.pl [-abcde] [ip_address [ip_address ...]]` [download] Or, if your script does depend on, say, one additional argument, consider putting that in a flag, either making that option mandatory or using a suitable default (like stdin for a file), or just add it to the list of non-option arguments: `Usage: script.pl [-abcde] -f filename [ip_address [ip_address ...]] Usage: script.pl [-abcde] filename [ip_address [ip_address ...]]` [download] Multiple arguments after a single option tag is kind of strange for people used to "standard" command line options for scripts and utilities. I would think about re-working the interface instead of trying to force Getopt to play by these other rules.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
(Guildenstern) Re: Re: Getopt Behavior by Guildenstern (Deacon) on Dec 06, 2000 at 01:15 UTC
Non-standard? Getopt::Long supports this with no problems. Here's a snippet from the POD: Example of using variable references: $ret = GetOptions ('foo=s', \$foo, 'bar=i', 'ar=s', \@ar); With command line options ``-foo blech -bar 24 -ar xx -ar yy'' this wi +ll result in: $foo = 'blech' $opt_bar = 24 @ar = ('xx','yy') [download] Looks to me like Getopt should have no problem with the original question. gaspodethewonderdog just needs to change the variable into a reference. Update: MeowChow is right - the example does use the -ar multiple times instead of just once. However, I do know that it can be done, since I have a working example. Guildenstern Negaterd character class uber alles!	[reply] [d/l]
Re: (Guildenstern) Re: Re: Getopt Behavior by MeowChow (Vicar) on Dec 06, 2000 at 01:25 UTC
In this example, the `-ar` switch must be specified once for each list element, which is exactly what he wants to avoid. He's looking for a syntax which will understand: `-foo blech -bar 24 -ar xx yy`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
(Guildenstern) Re: Getopt Behavior by Guildenstern (Deacon) on Dec 05, 2000 at 23:01 UTC
Here's an example from some code that I've written. This will allow the user to specify multiple IP addresses without having to use the command line switch multiple times. `use Getopt::Long; GetOptions("i:s",\@ignored_IPs);` [download] This lets me say "-i 1.1.1.1 2.2.2.2" etc and all of the IPs are stored in the @ignored_IPs array. AFAIK, only Getopt::Long does this. Update: After taking a better look at your code, it looks like all you really should have to do is make your variable name that will hold the options into a reference. Guildenstern Negaterd character class uber alles!	[reply] [d/l]


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