AppConfig::Std(3)

NAME
AppConfig::Std - subclass of AppConfig that provides standard options

SYNOPSIS
    use AppConfig::Std;

    $config = AppConfig::Std->new();

    # all AppConfig methods supported
    $config->define('foo');            # define variable foo
    $config->set('foo', 25);           # setting a variable
    $val = $config->get('foo');        # getting variable
    $val = $config->foo();             # shorthand for getting

    $config->args(\@ARGV);             # parse command-line
    $config->file(".myconfigrc")       # read config file

DESCRIPTION
AppConfig::Std is a Perl module that provides a set of standard configuration variables and command-line switches. It is implemented as a subclass of AppConfig; AppConfig provides a general mechanism for handling global configuration variables.

The features provided by AppConfig::Std are:

•   Standard command-line arguments: -help, -doc, -version, -verbose, and -debug. AppConfig::Std handles the -help, -doc, and -version switches for you, so you don't need to duplicate that code in all of your scripts. These are described below.

•   The ARGCOUNT default is set to 1. This means that by default all switches are expected to take a value. To change this, set the ARGCOUNT parameter when defining the variable:

        $config->define('verbose', { ARGCOUNT => 0 } );

Please read the copious documentation for AppConfig to find out what else you can do with this module.

STANDARD OPTIONS
The module adds five standard configuration variables and command-line switches. You can define additional variables as you would with AppConfig.

  HELP
The -help switch will result in a short help message. This is generated using Pod::Usage, which displays the OPTIONS section of your pod. The script will exit with an exit value of 0.

  DOC
The -doc switch will result in the entire documentation being formatted to the screen. This is also done with Pod::Usage. The script will exit with an exit value of 0.

  VERSION
The -version switch will display the version of the invoking script. This assumes that you have defined $VERSION in your script with something like the following:

    use vars qw( $VERSION );
    $VERSION = sprintf("%d.%02d", q$Revision: 1.7 $ =~ /(\d+)\.(\d+)/);

The script will exit with an exit value of 0.

  DEBUG
The -debug switch just sets the debug variable. This is useful for displaying information in debug mode:

    $foobar->dump() if $config->debug;

  VERBOSE
The -verbose switch just sets the verbose variable. This is useful for displaying verbose information as a script runs:

    print STDERR "Running foobar\n" if $config->verbose;

TODO
Please let me know if you have ideas for additional switches, or other modifications. Things currently being mulled:

•   Support brief switches, such as -h as well as -help. This could be a config option for the constructor.

•   Include a sample script called mkscript, which would create a template script along with Makefile.PL, MANIFEST, etc. Kinda of a h2xs for scripts.

EXAMPLE
The following is the outline of a simple script that illustrates use of the AppConfig::Std module:

    #!/usr/bin/perl -w
    use strict;
    use AppConfig::Std;

    use vars qw( $VERSION );
    $VERSION = '1.0';

    my $config = AppConfig::Std->new();

    # parse command-line and handle std switches
    $config->args(\@ARGV);

    exit 0;

    __END__

    =head1 NAME

    standard pod format documentation

The pod documentation is expected to have the NAME, SYNOPSIS, DESCRIPTION, and OPTIONS sections. See the documentation for "pod2man" for more details.

SEE ALSO
AppConfig - Andy Wardley's module for unifying command-line switches and cofiguration files into the notion of configuration variables. AppConfig::Std requires version 1.52+ of the module, which is available from CPAN.

Pod::Usage - Brad Appleton's module for extracting usage information out of a file's pod. This is used for the -doc and -help switches. Available from CPAN as part of the PodParser distribution.

perlpod <https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/perl/pod/perlpod.pod> - documentation from the perl distribution that describes the pod format.

pod2man <https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/podlators/scripts/pod2man> - particularly the NOTES section in the documentation which describes the sections you should include in your documentation. AppConfig::Std uses Pod::Usage, which assumes well-formed pod.

REPOSITORY
<https://github.com/neilb/AppConfig-Std>

AUTHOR
Neil Bowers <neil@bowers.com>

COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 2002-2013 Neil Bowers.

Copyright (c) 1998-2001 Canon Research Centre Europe. All rights reserved.

This script is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.