OP: Different people prefer different approaches, but I recommend Getopt::Long over Getopt::Std, et al. I like being able to use more than just a single letter for the flags to increase readability. Also, you can still abbreviate to a single letter (or unique fragment) to reduce typing when calling the script from the CLI. Another tip: you can set default, overridable values by defining (rather than just declaring) before the Getopts block for whichever variables you want defaults.