use strict;
use warnings;
use Getopt::Long;
use Data::Dumper;

#-------------------------------------------------------
sub parseArgs {
  my ($aRules, $aArgs) = @_;

  # version used with 5.8.8 expects arguments in @ARGV
  # the version in the 5.10 core has a function that can
  # read arguments from any array, not just @ARGV.

  local @ARGV = @$aArgs;
  Getopt::Long::GetOptions(my $hOpts={}, @$aRules);
  return $hOpts;
}

#-------------------------------------------------------

my $aRules
  =  [ 'name=s'        #allow any string as value
       , 'val|v=i'     #allow --val or -v, require number
       , 'list=s@{,}'  #allow arbitrary lists of values
     ];

my $hParsed = parseArgs($aRules, \@ARGV);
print Dumper($hParsed);