use strict; use warnings; use Getopt::Long(); sub usage { my $message = shift(@_); if ( defined $message && length $message ) { $message .= "\n" unless $message =~ /\n$/; } my $command = $0; $command =~ s#^.*/##; print STDERR ( $message, "usage: $command -f file(s).xls -p file.csv\n" ); die("\n"); } my @xls; my $csv; print "This is the number of \@ARGV arguments before the process " . @ARGV . "\n"; Getopt::Long::GetOptions( 'f=s' => \@xls, 'p=s' => \$csv, ) or usage("Invalid commmand line options."); usage("The '*.xls' file(s) needs to be specified.") if scalar( @xls == 0 ); usage("The '*.csv' file needs to be specified.") unless defined $csv; print "Input given form \@xls: " . @xls . "\n"; print "Input given form \$csv: " . $csv . "\n"; use Data::Dumper; print Dumper(\@xls); __END__ Here is my output: This is the number of @ARGV arguments before the process 6 Input given form @xls: 2 Input given form $csv: test.csv $VAR1 = [ 'sample.xls', 'test.xls' ];