NAME

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

SYNOPSIS

        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.'],
                                                        ]);
        
        # Parse the default option source (@ARGV)
        %results = $options->get_options();
        
        # Provide usage
        if($options->get_result('help')){
                $options->print_usage();
                exit(1);
        }

CONTENTS

 Options 1.50

DESCRIPTION

 Options was created to somewhat emulate the syntax of the Twisted Python's
 core usage library of the same name. It provides a parser for command-line
 options that is integrated with an automatic usage generator. Support exists
 for both flags and parameters, in long and short form, required parameters,
 and default params.

EXPORT

None by default.

GETTING OPTIONS

new Options()

 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.

$options->get_options()

 This method is called with no arguments, and begins the parsing of
 the global variable @ARGV, or an array passed as the first argument
 to the function. 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.

$options->print_usage($optional_message)

 Options will automatically display usage information if a required
 parameter is omitted, but this method can be used to implement a
 --help parameter.

AUTHOR

Phil Christensen, <phil@bubblehouse.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2005-2007 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.