NAME

Options - A perl module to provide better support for command-line option parsing, hopefully better than GetOpts.

SYNOPSIS

        C<perl -MCPAN -e 'install Options'>

        use Options;
        
    $options = new Options(params => [
                                                        ['port', 'p', undef, 'The port to connect to.'],
                                                        ['host', 'h', 'localhost', 'The host to connect to.']
                                                        ],
                                                        flags =>  [
                                                        ['secure', 's', 'Use SSL for encryption.'],
                                                        ['quit', 'q', 'Quit after connecting.'],
                                                        ]);

CONTENTS

 Options 1.42

DESCRIPTION

 Create a new instance of the Options class. To do so, pass the constructor
 two optional, named arguments. 'params' are command-line switches with
 arguments, while flags are boolean switches. (duh.)

 Each argument consists of an anonymous array reference which contains
 an anonymous array for each option you wish to support.

 Params arrays must be four elements long, consisting of the long and short
 versions of the switch, a default value, and a description to be printed in
 the usage guide. If the default value is specified as "undef", it becomes a
 required value, and the program will not continue without it. Options without
 defaults can specify the empty string ("") to omit the default.

 Flags arrays are simpler, and omit the default element.

EXPORT

None by default.

GETTING OPTIONS

• $options->get_options()

   This method is called with no arguments, and begins the parsing of
   the global variable @ARGV. When finished, it returns a hash where the
   keys are the long option names, and the values are the result of the
   parse, i.e., strings for params, and boolean values (1 or 0 actually)
   for flag-type options.
  
   If the parser encounters an unknown flag, or a bare word without a
   recognized switch before it, these are left in the @ARV array in the
   order they are found, so that a script can do additional processing of
   @ARGV.
  
   If the result is missing a required parameter, the module prints the
   usage table, and exits with a 1 status code.

• $options->get_result(option)

   Although get_options returns a hash, and that is an
   acceptable way to use the results, this function provides
   some level of convenience when dealing with options that
   may return a reference to a list of results for that option.
   When called in a list context, this will return a list of
   results, even if only one argument was provided.
   However, calling it in a scalar context when there are
   multiple arguments will be, shall we say, disappointing.

AUTHOR

Phil Christensen, <phil@bubblehouse.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2005 by Phil Christensen

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.6 or, at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.