README
1 Getopt::Tabular
2 version 0.2
3 19 June, 1997
4
5Copyright (c) 1995-97 Greg Ward. All rights reserved. This is free
6software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as
7Perl itself.
8
9Getopt::Tabular is a Perl 5 module for table-driven argument parsing,
10vaguely inspired by John Ousterhout's Tk_ParseArgv. See Tabular.pod for
11details. It is available from
12
13 ftp://ftp.bic.mni.mcgill.ca/users/greg
14
15and should be available through CPAN at
16
17 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/id/GWARD
18
19
20Some nice features of Getopt::Tabular are:
21
22* Command-line arguments are carefully type-checked, both by pattern and
23 number---e.g. if an option requires two integers, GetOptions makes sure
24 that exactly two integers follow it!
25
26* The valid command-line arguments are specified in a data structure
27 separate from the call to GetOptions; this makes it easier to have very
28 long lists of options, and to parse options from multiple sources
29 (e.g. the command line, an environment variable, and a configuration
30 file).
31
32* Getopt::Tabular can intelligently generate help text based on your option
33 descriptions.
34
35* The type system is extensible, and if you can define your desired
36 argument type using a single Perl regular expression then it's
37 particularly easy to extend.
38
39* Options can be abbreviated and come in any order.
40
41* A "spoof" mode in which arguments are parsed without side-effects.
42
43To test and install Getopt::Tabular:
44
45 perl ./Makefile.PL
46 make test
47 make install
48
49That's it! The test suite isn't very complete yet, but it's a start. The
50documentation is quite extensive; only a few minor features aren't covered.
51Also, there is a demo program that shows off several of the module's
52features.
53
54Email problems, questions, bug reports, etc. to greg@bic.mni.mcgill.ca.
55