This is to announce a module which has actually been on CPAN for a while now:
Argv bdph Provide an OO interface to an ARGV DSB
Argv is designed to model a command line as an object for the benefit of
wrapper programs which may need to do lots of manipulation on it. I had
written such a wrapper and it ended up doing a heinous amount of shifting,
splicing, looping, mapping and grepping on @ARGV. In some cases I had to
localize @ARGV in order that Getopt:Long could operate on a copy. And all
of this had to be done differently for UNIX and Windows. The final result
was hideous, so I wrote this module in response. After instantiating an
Argv object, you can tell it to parse its options into as many user-defined
"option sets" as you wish, then recombine them in any permutation and run
them via the system, exec, and qx methods. Here's a non-real-world example
from the POD:
# A demonstration of how to use option sets in a wrapper program.
# Instantiate an object using the current @ARGV and parse its
# flags into 3 different sets, of which we'll use one for 'who'
# and another for 'uname'.
@ARGV = qw(Who -a -y foo -r);
my $who = Argv->new(@ARGV);
$who->dbglevel(1);
$who->optset(qw(UNAME FOO WHO));
$who->parseUNAME(qw(a m n p));
$who->parseFOO(qw(y=s z));
$who->parseWHO('r');
warn "got -y flag in option set FOO\n" if $who->flagFOO('y');
print Argv->new('uname', $who->optsUNAME)->qx;
$who->prog(lc $who->prog);
$who->exec(qw(WHO));
A secondary value is for Unix/Windows interoperability. The system, exec,
and qx methods automatically quote their arguments against the ^&@$ DOS
shell and provide various other conveniences in aid of spawning new
processes on either platform without a lot of special-casing. Thus, even
users with no interest in advanced manipulation of argv's may find this
module useful as a portability enhancer.
The README is at ftp://ftp.cleartool.com/pub/Argv/README, the full POD at
ftp://ftp.cleartool.com/pub/Argv/Argv.html, and the latest full package is
ftp://ftp.cleartool.com/pub/Argv/Argv-0.42.tar.gz.
And since I'm afraid it may figure in any ensuing discussions, here's a
section from the README:
A NOTE ON THE NAME
I'm aware that single-level namespaces are generally deprecated, but there
are many modern exceptions; see Memoize, Coy, and Interpolation among
others. I tried hard to fit mine into an existing namespace as well as
soliciting ideas at [EMAIL PROTECTED] But I couldn't find a natural place
by myself and no one on the modules list was able to suggest a fitting spot
either.
Considering the alternatives of putting it in a 'wrong' category just for
the sake of having one, or creating a category ghetto for it to live in all
alone, I decided there was a reasonable case for making an exception. IMHO
"Argv" is just the natural name for this module. The [EMAIL PROTECTED]
policies don't say that single-level names are forbidden, they simply have
wording to the effect that one should think long and hard before using such
a name. I'm here to say that I did think long (seven months) and hard.
Thanks in advance,
David Boyce
