How can I pass command-line arguments to a Perl program?

perl command-line
lamcro picture lamcro · Dec 12, 2008 · Viewed 346.6k times · Source

I'm working on a Perl script. How can I pass command line parameters to it?

Example:

script.pl "string1" "string2"

Answer

user44511 picture user44511 · Dec 12, 2008

Depends on what you want to do. If you want to use the two arguments as input files, you can just pass them in and then use <> to read their contents.

If they have a different meaning, you can use GetOpt::Std and GetOpt::Long to process them easily. GetOpt::Std supports only single-character switches and GetOpt::Long is much more flexible. From GetOpt::Long: 

use Getopt::Long;
my $data   = "file.dat";
my $length = 24;
my $verbose;
$result = GetOptions ("length=i" => \$length,    # numeric
                    "file=s"   => \$data,      # string
                    "verbose"  => \$verbose);  # flag

Alternatively, @ARGV is a special variable that contains all the command line arguments. $ARGV[0] is the first (ie. "string1" in your case) and $ARGV[1] is the second argument. You don't need a special module to access @ARGV.

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