#!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; use Getopt::Long; use 5.010; # Just to use say() my ($mean, $sum); my $result = GetOptions ("mean" => \$mean); my @nums = @ARGV; foreach (@nums) { say; # Only calculate the mean if flag exists if ($mean) { $sum += $_; } } say $sum/@nums if $mean; __END__ $ perl mean.pl 1 3 2 1 3 2 $ perl mean.pl -m 1 3 2 1 3 2 2 $ perl mean.pl -mean 1 3 2 1 3 2 2