defining variable values on the commandline

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

I remember seeing this somewhere but can't find it anymore....

want to define the value of a var on the commandline. is this possible ?

example commandline: perl -e $myvar=123; test.pl

example perl script test.pl: print "the value is $myvar";

this is a very simple example of course...

probably a stupid syntax error somewhere ;-)

any help greatly appreciated!

Filip

Edited: ~Tue Jul 9 18:24:02 2002 (GMT), by footpad:
Added <code> (and other formatting) tags, per Consideration.

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•Re: defining variable values on the commandline by merlyn (Sage) on Jul 09, 2002 at 15:44 UTC
`perldoc perlrun`: -s enables rudimentary switch parsing for switches on the comman +d line after the program name but before any filename arguments (or +before an argument of --). This means you can have switches with two leading dashes (--help). Any switch found there is removed fr +om @ARGV and sets the corresponding variable in the Perl program +. The following program prints "1" if the program is invoked with a + -xyz switch, and "abc" if it is invoked with -xyz=abc. #!/usr/bin/perl -s if ($xyz) { print "$xyz\n" } Do note that --help creates the variable ${-help}, which is n +ot compliant with "strict refs". [download] And that last note is noteworthy. Such variables are not the same as lexical variables; they are package variables in package `main::`. -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker	[reply] [d/l]
Re: defining variable values on the commandline by broquaint (Abbot) on Jul 09, 2002 at 15:45 UTC
want to define the value of a var on the commandline is this possible ? It certainly is. See the `-s` option in the `perlrun` manpage. Here's a brief example `shell> cat > dash_s_switch.pl print "\$foo is $foo\n"; ^D shell> perl -s dash_s_switch.pl -foo="a string" $foo is a string` [download] HTH `_________ broquaint`	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: defining variable values on the commandline by fjonckers (Novice) on Jul 09, 2002 at 16:30 UTC
just what the monkdoctor ordered ... the -s works fine Thanks Guys !	[reply]
Re: defining variable values on the commandline by Fastolfe (Vicar) on Jul 09, 2002 at 21:08 UTC
When dealing with anything but one-liners, I might also suggest you examine the Getopt:: line of modules (like Getopt::Std). These generally provide a more flexible mechanism for grabbing command-line arguments, and frequently can make use of a hash to avoid polluting your global name space.	[reply]