G'day chaney123,

Welcome to the Monastery.

@ARGV is a special variable (see perlvar). You'll find documentation about @ARGV, along with other variables containing 'ARGV', in the "Variables related to filehandles" section.

You can use it directly in your code:

$ perl -E 'say for @ARGV' file_1 file_2
file_1
file_2
[download]

You can assign it to another variable and use that:

$ perl -E 'my @x = @ARGV; say for @x' file_1 file_2
file_1
file_2
[download]

Be careful if your arguments (whether filenames or something else) start with a hyphen, e.g. the -file_1 and -file_2 you show:

$ perl -E 'say for @ARGV' -file_1 -file_2
-i used with no filenames on the command line, reading from STDIN.
[download]

They look like options (to both Perl and humans). Separate options and other (non-option) arguments with '--':

$ perl -E 'say for @ARGV' -- -file_1 -file_2
-file_1
-file_2
[download]

If your command line arguments are options, instead of trying to process them yourself, use one of the core modules. Getopt::Long is what I use. There's also Getopt::Std: I don't use that one so I can't really comment on it.

@ARGV

The array @ARGV contains the command-line arguments intended for the script.
$#ARGV is generally the number of arguments minus one, because $ARGV[0] is the first argument, not the program's command name itself.
See $0 for the command name.

Here are a few references to get you started:

Perl Maven : argv in perl

Roberts tutorial

#!/usr/bin/perl;
use strict;
use warnings;

#this file is: file_3.pl
#command used: >perl file_3.pl -file_1 -file_2

print "$_\n" for @ARGV;

__END__
C:\Projects_Perl\testing>perl file_3.pl  -file_1 -file_2
-file_1
-file_2
[download]

I am not sure what you want to do. Please explain further.

For command line processing see also Re: Using number "0" as an input argument and the links ibidem. Regards, Karl

Hello chaney123,

It seems the fellow Monks have provided you with plenty of examples and tutorials. I would like to add something minor here.

My personal (favorite) way of handling @ARGV when you need to read files (but not only for that) I prefer to use it like this:

#!usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

while (<>) {
    print "$.\t$_"; # updating $. $.\t$_
} continue {
    close ARGV if eof;
}
[download]

Depending upon the case of course but I tend to prefer to use it like this. It does not mean that it always the best solution, but it depends upon your task. You can read more about that here eof and also similar question with code samples on how to open a file and parse the data open and read text file.

Hope this helps, BR.

Also in the "I/O Operators" section of perlop. "The null filehandle <> is special..."
Bill