It seems like most Perl scripts, along with most utilities that come with Unix-like operating systems, rely on command line switches to control them. If they don't recognize any of the flags you used, they just instruct you to run it again with -h or --help specified.

Maybe it's because I mainly use Windows, but whenever I write a small command line script, even if it's just for my own use, I always have it prompt for input if none is specified. For example, these two commands would accomplish the same thing: 
> perl script.pl -f filename.txt
> perl script.pl
Which file would you like to use?
filename.txt

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I can only recall having seen one program that did this, which was a Perl script that walked you through setting up users for mySQL.

Is there a good reason for not doing it my way? It seems like that would make the program much more accessible to users who can't remember all those flags. Is it just a case of these programs traditionally being used by advanced Unix users or called by other programs?

In reply to A thought about usability in Perl and Linux in general. by Cap'n Steve

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