AppConfig::Args(3)             User Contributed Perl Documentation             AppConfig::Args(3)



NAME
       AppConfig::Args - Perl5 module for reading command line arguments.

SYNOPSIS
           use AppConfig::Args;

           my $state   = AppConfig::State->new(\%cfg);
           my $cfgargs = AppConfig::Args->new($state);

           $cfgargs->parse(\@args);            # read args

OVERVIEW
       AppConfig::Args is a Perl5 module which reads command line arguments and uses the options
       therein to update variable values in an AppConfig::State object.

       AppConfig::File is distributed as part of the AppConfig bundle.

DESCRIPTION
       USING THE AppConfig::Args MODULE

       To import and use the AppConfig::Args module the following line should appear in your Perl
       script:

           use AppConfig::Args;

       AppConfig::Args is used automatically if you use the AppConfig module and create an App-
       Config::Args object through the parse() method.

       AppConfig::File is implemented using object-oriented methods.  A new AppConfig::Args
       object is created and initialised using the new() method.  This returns a reference to a
       new AppConfig::File object.  A reference to an AppConfig::State object should be passed in
       as the first parameter:

           my $state   = AppConfig::State->new();
           my $cfgargs = AppConfig::Args->new($state);

       This will create and return a reference to a new AppConfig::Args object.

       PARSING COMMAND LINE ARGUMENTS

       The "parse()" method is used to read a list of command line arguments and update the STATE
       accordingly.  A reference to the list of arguments should be passed in.

           $cfgargs->parse(\@ARGV);

       If the method is called without a reference to an argument list then it will examine and
       manipulate @ARGV.

       If the PEDANTIC option is turned off in the AppConfig::State object, any parsing errors
       (invalid variables, unvalidated values, etc) will generate warnings, but not cause the
       method to return.  Having processed all arguments, the method will return 1 if processed
       without warning or 0 if one or more warnings were raised.  When the PEDANTIC option is
       turned on, the method generates a warning and immediately returns a value of 0 as soon as
       it encounters any parsing error.

       The method continues parsing arguments until it detects the first one that does not start
       with a leading dash, '-'.  Arguments that constitute values for other options are not
       examined in this way.

FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
       This module was developed to provide backwards compatibility (to some degree) with the
       preceeding App::Config module.  The argument parsing it provides is basic but offers a
       quick and efficient solution for those times when simple option handling is all that is
       required.

       If you require more flexibility in parsing command line arguments, then you should con-
       sider using the AppConfig::Getopt module.  This is loaded and used automatically by call-
       ing the AppConfig getopt() method.

       The AppConfig::Getopt module provides considerably extended functionality over the AppCon-
       fig::Args module by delegating out the task of argument parsing to Johan Vromans'
       Getopt::Long module.  For advanced command-line parsing, this module (either Getopt::Long
       by itself, or in conjunction with AppConfig::Getopt) is highly recommended.

AUTHOR
       Andy Wardley, <>

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright (C) 1997-2007 Andy Wardley.  All Rights Reserved.

       Copyright (C) 1997,1998 Canon Research Centre Europe Ltd.

       This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
       terms as Perl itself.

SEE ALSO
       AppConfig, AppConfig::State, AppConfig::Getopt, Getopt::Long



perl v5.8.8                                 2007-05-30                         AppConfig::Args(3)