Hello Monks,

I have been introduced recently to the Getopt::Long and I was trying to create my first example by storing ARGV inputs into an array and checking for the extension '*.xls' and '*.csv' through a regex expression.

My code was copied and modified from Examples for using Getopt::Long.

Although that I am applying the same technique to the last argument of ARGV and works just fine I can not find a way to applied it also on the nth - 1 elements. The problem appears because of the -f extension to my '*.xls' files. I need to find a way to separate the -f extension from all the arguments except of the last one. Because the last one has a different extension -p. To get the last element of the ARG I am using pop function.

I observed that ARGV also take in consideration the -f and -p options that I am using as input from terminal, while I was processing the values.

If any one feels more familiar and can provide any thoughts to my problems I would be great.

My target is to create a dynamic argument input and check one by one the arguments for '*.xls' and '*.csv' extensions. So far, my code works fine for the last argument input, but the problem appears when I am trying to check the rest of the inputs.

Sample of input: perl test.pl -f test.xls -f test-2.xls -f test-3.xls -p sample.csv. At this point I can detect the error if the user did not provide a '*.csv'. My problem is that I can not check one by one the other argument inputs and store them in the array @xls.

I modified the code based on my last update, but again I got stuck. Based on my last modification, the code compiles without any errors but it can not detect the '*.xls' elements one by one.

Expected output would be (taken in consideration the input):

$VAR1 = [
          'test.xls',
          'test-2.xls',
          'test-3.xls'
        ];
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I am trying to separate the -f option of every argument input so I can extract only the files test.xls test-2.xls test-3.xls and store them into the @xls array as an output.

I am using the syntax taken from Getopt::Long (perldoc), because on the documentation says:

foo=s{1,} indicates one or more values; foo:s{,} indicates zero or more option values.

In my case I need to have at least one argument input, and the final number unknown.

#!/usr/bin/perl
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 ".@AR
+GV."\n";

Getopt::Long::GetOptions(
    'f=s{1,}' => sub {
    foreach $_ (@_) {
        print $_ . "\n";
        /\.xls$/
        or die ("Invalid format for option expected -f '*.xls'\n");
        push(@xls,$_);
    }
    },
    'p=s'     => sub {
    $_ = pop @_;
    /\.csv$/
        or die ("Invalid format for option expected -p '*.csv'\n");
    $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";

=test
    'f=s{1,}' => sub {
    foreach $_ (@_) {
        print $_ . "\n";
        /\.xls$/
        or die ("Invalid format for option expected -p '*.xls'\n");
=cut
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This is the number of @ARGV arguments before the process 4
f
Invalid format for option expected -f '*.xls'
Invalid commmand line options.
usage: long.pl -f file(s).xls -p file.csv
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Which it makes sense based on my observations. Because I can see that the inputs are collected normally but I am reading the -f as an input.I have to figure out how to read the argument inputs all apart from the last one, and then remove the -f option in order to keep only the file arguments.

I have commented the last part of my code where I am checking for the '*.xls' extension one by one the inputs. This is also a problem because of the -f option but I will deal with it after.

Thank you in advance for your time and effort reading and replying to my question.

Getopt::Long::GetOptions(
    'f=s{1,}' => sub {
    foreach $_ (@_) {
        if ($_ =~ /\.xls$/) {
        print "This is if \$_: ".$_."\n";
        push( @xls , $_ );
        }
        elsif ($_ =~ /^f/) {
        next;
        }
        else {
        die ("Invalid format for option expected -f '*.xls'\n");
        }
    } # End of foreach
    },
    'p=s'     => sub {
    $_ = pop @_;
    /\.csv$/
        or die ("Invalid format for option expected -p '*.csv'\n");
    $csv = $_;
    }
    )
    or usage("Invalid commmand line options.");
[download]

Again thanks everyone time and effort to assist me.