AppConfig::Args(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation AppConfig::Args(3)NAMEAppConfig::Args - Perl5 module for reading command line arguments.
SYNOPSIS
use AppConfig::Args;
my $state = AppConfig::State->new(\%cfg);
my $cfgargs = AppConfig::Args->new($state);
$cfgargs->parse(\@args); # read args
OVERVIEWAppConfig::Args is a Perl5 module which reads command line arguments
and uses the options therein to update variable values in an
AppConfig::State object.
AppConfig::File is distributed as part of the AppConfig bundle.
DESCRIPTION
USING THE AppConfig::Args MODULE
To import and use the AppConfig::Args module the following line should
appear in your Perl script:
use AppConfig::Args;
AppConfig::Args is used automatically if you use the AppConfig module
and create an AppConfig::Args object through the parse() method.
AppConfig::File is implemented using object-oriented methods. A new
AppConfig::Args object is created and initialised using the new()
method. This returns a reference to a new AppConfig::File object. A
reference to an AppConfig::State object should be passed in as the
first parameter:
my $state = AppConfig::State->new();
my $cfgargs = AppConfig::Args->new($state);
This will create and return a reference to a new AppConfig::Args
object.
PARSING COMMAND LINE ARGUMENTS
The "parse()" method is used to read a list of command line arguments
and update the STATE accordingly. A reference to the list of arguments
should be passed in.
$cfgargs->parse(\@ARGV);
If the method is called without a reference to an argument list then it
will examine and manipulate @ARGV.
If the PEDANTIC option is turned off in the AppConfig::State object,
any parsing errors (invalid variables, unvalidated values, etc) will
generate warnings, but not cause the method to return. Having
processed all arguments, the method will return 1 if processed without
warning or 0 if one or more warnings were raised. When the PEDANTIC
option is turned on, the method generates a warning and immediately
returns a value of 0 as soon as it encounters any parsing error.
The method continues parsing arguments until it detects the first one
that does not start with a leading dash, '-'. Arguments that
constitute values for other options are not examined in this way.
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
This module was developed to provide backwards compatibility (to some
degree) with the preceeding App::Config module. The argument parsing
it provides is basic but offers a quick and efficient solution for
those times when simple option handling is all that is required.
If you require more flexibility in parsing command line arguments, then
you should consider using the AppConfig::Getopt module. This is loaded
and used automatically by calling the AppConfig getopt() method.
The AppConfig::Getopt module provides considerably extended
functionality over the AppConfig::Args module by delegating out the
task of argument parsing to Johan Vromans' Getopt::Long module. For
advanced command-line parsing, this module (either Getopt::Long by
itself, or in conjunction with AppConfig::Getopt) is highly
recommended.
AUTHOR
Andy Wardley, <abw@wardley.org>
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 1997-2007 Andy Wardley. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright (C) 1997,1998 Canon Research Centre Europe Ltd.
This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.
SEE ALSO
AppConfig, AppConfig::State, AppConfig::Getopt, Getopt::Long
perl v5.14.2 2007-05-30 AppConfig::Args(3)