How would you define an interface where you specify a string and a place where to store the value if that string is matched somewhere?
You pass a list of pairs to GetOptions(...), and that list of pairs is 1) the specification of the switch ("name|alias=value type") and 2) the place where the value should be written to. The way to pass a place around in Perl is usually to pass a reference to the target around, which is what happens with the \$foo thing.
An alternative approach is to make GetOptions(...) store all things it finds in a hash. This will give you a plain hash without weird syntax, but on the downside, you lose the typo checking that strict.pm provides.
In reply to Re: Getopt::Long - why \$ ?
by Corion
in thread Getopt::Long - why \$ ?
by Melly
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