parsing commandline arguments

io has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Greetings, monks I found myself wondering what would be the nicest way to parse commandline arguments. Previously i was using something like this:

for($i=0; $i<@ARGV; $i+=2) {
    $ip   = $ARGV[$i+1] if $ARGV[$i] eq '-i' || $ARGV[$i] eq '--ip';
    $port = $ARGV[$i+1] if $ARGV[$i] eq '-p' || $ARGV[$i] eq '--port';
}
[download]

Much like one would do it in c. Now i found this way, which is much nicer:

while(@ARGV) {
    $_ = shift @ARGV;

    $ip   = shift @ARGV if /-i/ || /--ip/;
    $port = shift @ARGV if /-p/ || /--port/;
}
[download]

Note that i expected shift @ARGV would work. Oh well. How would you do it? Thanks for your wisdom :-)

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Re: parsing commandline arguments by djantzen (Priest) on Feb 12, 2002 at 13:37 UTC
Well, you can certainly do it this way if you want, however you'll find it much nicer to use Getopt::Long.	[reply]
Re: parsing commandline arguments by dreadpiratepeter (Priest) on Feb 12, 2002 at 14:22 UTC
You also might want to look at Getopt::Declare by Damian Conway. It is the kitchen-sink of argument processors. It support any number of argument formats, automatically generates usage, can verify multi-argument dependencies, plus a whole lot more. -pete Entropy is not what is used to be.	[reply]
Re: parsing commandline arguments by grinder (Bishop) on Feb 12, 2002 at 16:28 UTC
You may wish to consider reading my Tutorial on the subject, which has nearly the same title :) Parsing your script's command line print@_{sort keys %_},$/if%_=split//,'= & *a?b:e\f/h^h!j+n,o@o;r$s-t%t#u'	[reply]
Re: parsing commandline arguments by jonjacobmoon (Pilgrim) on Feb 12, 2002 at 14:24 UTC
Just a good rule thumb: If you know that its been done, and is being done often, check for a module. As fever said, Getopts applies here, but you never want to waste time writting code that has already been written. I admit it, I am Paco.	[reply]
Re: parsing commandline arguments by io (Scribe) on Feb 12, 2002 at 21:42 UTC
Thanks very much for your suggestions. The tutorial is very helpfull :-)	[reply]
Re: parsing commandline arguments by pizza_milkshake (Monk) on Feb 12, 2002 at 14:23 UTC
at the risk of being more confusing (as well as leaving out strict and my), I offer this: while(@ARGV){ ($_, $v) = splice @ARGV, -2; $ip = $v if /--?ip?/; $port = $v if /--?p(ort)?/ }	[reply]