@ARGV: two different types of arguments

steph_bow has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello

My script entries need some arguments whose number and place are well-defined and need some arguments whose number is variable

For example, here is the beginning of my code. I am not sure it is correct.

print STDOUT "enter the name of the beacon\n";
my $beacon = $ARGV[0];
print STDOUT "enter the value of the begin_time\n";
my $begin_time = $ARGV[1];
print STDOUT "enter the value of the end_time\n";
my $end_time = $ARGV[2];
print STDOUT "enter the days\n";
my  @DAYS = @ARGV;
[download]

Won't @ARGV overwrite the first $ARGV ? @ARGV can contain several days, but their number varies

Thanks a lot

Comment on @ARGV: two different types of arguments Download Code

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Re: @ARGV: two different types of arguments by GrandFather (Saint) on Jan 21, 2008 at 09:46 UTC
You are confusing two different modes of operation - parsing command line arguments and prompting for user input then processing it. @ARGV is initialized with the arguments passed on the command line when your script is executed. You do not need to prompt for the values - it is too late for the user to change the values in any case. The prompt/process mode uses STDOUT (in exactly the way your code demonstrates) to prompt the user for input at run time. Your code should then use <STDIN> to get a line of response from the user. For example you could write: `print STDOUT "enter the name of the beacon\n"; my $beacon = <STDIN>; ...` [download] You may then want to chomp $beacon to remove the trailing line end sequence and possibly validate the user provided value in some fashion. Perl is environmentally friendly - it saves trees	[reply] [d/l]
Re: @ARGV: two different types of arguments by moritz (Cardinal) on Jan 21, 2008 at 09:36 UTC
You shouldn't prompt the user for value he/she doesn't need to enter. You probably meant to do something like this: `my $beacon = shift @ARGV; my $begin_time = shift @ARGV; my $end_time = shift @ARGV; my @DAYS = @ARGV;` [download] This will remove the first three elements of `@ARGV` and assigns the rest to `@DAYS`. See shift for details.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: @ARGV: two different types of arguments by apl (Monsignor) on Jan 21, 2008 at 12:35 UTC
I'd strongly suggest that you take a look at Getopt::Long for all your parameter-processing needs.	[reply]