Getopt::Tabular
version 0.2
19 June, 1997
Copyright (c) 1995-97 Greg Ward. All rights reserved. This is free
software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as
Perl itself.
Getopt::Tabular is a Perl 5 module for table-driven argument parsing,
vaguely inspired by John Ousterhout's Tk_ParseArgv. See Tabular.pod for
details. It is available from
ftp://ftp.bic.mni.mcgill.ca/users/greg
and should be available through CPAN at
http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/id/GWARD
Some nice features of Getopt::Tabular are:
* Command-line arguments are carefully type-checked, both by pattern and
number---e.g. if an option requires two integers, GetOptions makes sure
that exactly two integers follow it!
* The valid command-line arguments are specified in a data structure
separate from the call to GetOptions; this makes it easier to have very
long lists of options, and to parse options from multiple sources
(e.g. the command line, an environment variable, and a configuration
file).
* Getopt::Tabular can intelligently generate help text based on your option
descriptions.
* The type system is extensible, and if you can define your desired
argument type using a single Perl regular expression then it's
particularly easy to extend.
* Options can be abbreviated and come in any order.
* A "spoof" mode in which arguments are parsed without side-effects.
To test and install Getopt::Tabular:
perl ./Makefile.PL
make test
make install
That's it! The test suite isn't very complete yet, but it's a start. The
documentation is quite extensive; only a few minor features aren't covered.
Also, there is a demo program that shows off several of the module's
features.
Email problems, questions, bug reports, etc. to greg@bic.mni.mcgill.ca.