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Perl/Basics/User Input/Command Line/Getopt::Long/Analysis

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The GetOptions() function receives message formats and references for variable assignment. You can execute the script as follows:

 perl script.pl --message "hello" --boolean
 perl script.pl --message "hello"

In the above example, we see the line:

 GetOptions('message=s' => \$message, 'boolean' => \$boolean);

You can see from the execution pattern above that the GetOptions() function provides an interface for the "double-dash" style command line arguments. The GetOptions() function receives a hash. The =s after message designates that the --message parameter receives a string data type. An =i will change it to integer. Simple no = will set the flag to a boolean; similar to an argument without a colon in Getopt::Std. Notice each variable is passed as a reference.