Please can you tell me what the hyphen before an argument means in the following code. 

$dbcontext = Bio::DB::SimpleDBContext->new(
                        -database => 'biosql'
                        -user     => 'xxxx',
                        -pass     => 'xxxx',
                        -dbname   => 'biosql',
                        -host     => 'localhost',
                        -port     => 3306,    # optional
                        -driver   => 'mysql',
            );

[download]

many thanks

In reply to beginner - hyphen before a parameter by Anonymous Monk

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