Firstly, I'm assuming you're using Getopt::Long.

Take a look at the Legacy - Default destinations section. There's an example there of using a @ destination type to produce a @opt_XXX array; I'm guessing a % destination type may produce the %opt_XXX you're after.

As this is legacy code that remains for backward compatibility, I'd recommend you look at newer ways of achieving what you want using this module.

Thanks Ken. That helped me do what I needed to do. Here's some code I used to test it, for anyone searching on the same problem.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use Getopt::Long;

GetOptions(\%opts,'foo','bar','tim');

map { ${"opt_$_"} = $opts{$_} } keys %opts;

@mainOptions=qw(foo bar tim);

map { do {$numOfMain++; $mainOption=$_;} if $opts{$_} } @mainOptions;


print "foohash=$opts{foo}\n";
print "opt_foo=$opt_foo\n";
print "barhash=$opts{bar}\n";
print "opt_bar=$opt_bar\n";
print "timhash=$opts{tim}\n";
print "opt_tim=$opt_tim\n";

print "numOfMain=$numOfMain\n";
print "mainOption=$mainOption\n";
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Unfortunately, that's not a particularly good solution and I wouldn't recommend it to someone researching a similar problem.

My two main issues with this code are the use of symbolic references (i.e. ${"opt_$_"}) and global variables (e.g. @mainOptions, $numOfMain and so on). Adding use strict; and use warnings; to the top of your code will highlight these and other problems.

-- Ken