The return value of GetOptions is useful: it tells you if some command line arguments processing went wrong. Then it's up to you to do checks and decide if is worth to continue with the program.

Your description but that not work it is not so useful to me to understand what you want to achieve.

Constructs like unless (A && B) are potentially confusing: your call to error_info happens only if GetOptions returns true and also $show_help is defined. It does not seems too logical to me.

After I read The Dynamic Duo --or-- Holy Getopt::Long, Pod::UsageMan! i usually start with something like: 

use Getopt::Long;
use Pod::Usage;

unless ( GetOptions (
                        "color=s"=>\$par_color,
                        "help"     => \$par_help,
                     )
        ) {pod2usage(-verbose => 1)}

if (defined $par_help){pod2usage(-verbose => 1)}

[download]

pod2usage implicitly exit the program. And is a sane behaviour: exit if arguments are not what you expected and exit if user requested help to be shown.

After this you need to manually validate your given arguments, but this is another story..

See also GetOpt Organization

HtH

L*

There are no rules, there are no thumbs..
Reinvent the wheel, then learn The Wheel; may be one day you reinvent one of THE WHEELS.

In reply to Re: why this not work? -- return value of GetOptions by Discipulus
in thread why this not work? by zapp_prefect

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