I use Getopt::Long quite a bit, and I'm pretty fond of this idiom:

use Getopt::Long;
GetOptions(
    'thing=s' => \(my $thing = ''),
    'other=s' => \(my $other = ''),
    'flag'    => \(my $flag = 0),
) or die 'options'; # usually scripts are for my own use

[download]

The one thing that always bugged me about this approach is that I have to treat arrays differently. (I really like defining the scalars the way I've done it above. Makes it easy to add or delete them.) This fails:

use Getopt::Long;
GetOptions( 'array=s@' => \(my @array) ) or die 'options';

[download]

...because the backslash creates a list of references over its operands. Which, in the case of the newly created array, is the empty list. Is there a way to cleverly get the behavior I want? (a replacement for the "\(my @array)" part that would be equivalent in some sense to "my @array; \@array")

In reply to Get reference to newly-created array by benizi

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.