Question

My Perl Script retrieves the argument in the below way. Have Getoptions function to retrieve the command line arguments.

./test.pl  -mode report -writeid 12 13 23......

$rc=GetOptions( 'mode=s' => \$cmdParams{mode}
           ,'writeid:i{1,}' => \@writeid
           ,'h|?|help'  => \$help
          );

The problem is when i have alphanumeric characters in the writeid option it’s not failing. Writeid is defined as integer ( i{1,}) and it can receive 1 to many values. It doesn’t fail when i have alphanumeric character in the second value.
./test.pl -mode report -writeid 12 A3 23……

What is the workaround i can do?

Answer 1

As you are using the GetOptions function I assume you are using GetOpts::Long, the trouble with the “{1,}” one or more quantity in the option specification is that once you’ve successfully matched an integer, you’ve “succeeded”. if you removed the quantitive spec and just ran with ‘writeid:i’ => \@writeid, each write_id would have to be preceded by the flag on the command line and so you would get an error state when it failed to parse.