Getopt::Std

Section: Perl Programmers Reference Guide (3perl)
Updated: 2001-02-22
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NAME

getopt - Process single-character switches with switch clustering

getopts - Process single-character switches with switch clustering

SYNOPSIS

    use Getopt::Std;

    getopt('oDI');    # -o, -D & -I take arg.  Sets opt_* as a side effect.
    getopt('oDI', \%opts);    # -o, -D & -I take arg.  Values in %opts
    getopts('oif:');  # -o & -i are boolean flags, -f takes an argument
                      # Sets opt_* as a side effect.
    getopts('oif:', \%opts);  # options as above. Values in %opts

DESCRIPTION

The getopt() functions processes single-character switches with switch clustering. Pass one argument which is a string containing all switches that take an argument. For each switch found, sets $opt_x (where x is the switch name) to the value of the argument, or 1 if no argument. Switches which take an argument don't care whether there is a space between the switch and the argument.

Note that, if your code is running under the recommended "use strict 'vars'" pragma, you will need to declare these package variables with ``our'':

    our($opt_foo, $opt_bar);

For those of you who don't like additional global variables being created, getopt() and getopts() will also accept a hash reference as an optional second argument. Hash keys will be x (where x is the switch name) with key values the value of the argument or 1 if no argument is specified.

To allow programs to process arguments that look like switches, but aren't, both functions will stop processing switches when they see the argument "--". The "--" will be removed from @ARGV.

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Time: 16:47:58 GMT, February 07, 2026