Question

Possible Duplicate:
Getopt::Long getting a string with spaces into a variable

Say I have the following Perl script:

use 5.010;
use strict;
use warnings;
use Getopt::Std; 
use vars qw($opt_i $opt_o $opt_m); 
&getopts('i:o:m:'); 

say $opt_m

If I call this script with

perl script.pl -i text -o string -m hello how are you, world?

I don’t get “hello how are you, world?” in $opt_m. How can I capture a string separated by whitespaces as one of the switch arguments to my script?

Answer 1

You are trying to build the string

hello how are you, world?

So you have to use a string literal that builds that string. The syntax for string literals will vary by shell, but you can probably build that string using either of the following:

hello\ how\ are\ you,\ world\?
'hello how are you, world?'