Using Perl's Getopt::Long, how can I prevent the module from trying to match ambiguous option names?

Question

I am using the Getopt::Long module to process command line arguments.

The typical behavior of this module is we could pass -f instead of full name of the variable --file. At the same time if I have another command line variable --find, and if I supply only -f at the command prompt, it would return with an error:

Option f is ambiguous (file, find).

I was wondering how can we curb such ambiguous usage?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Have a look at the Getopt::Long documentation:

auto_abbrev

Allow option names to be abbreviated to uniqueness. Default is enabled unless environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT has been set, in which case auto_abbrev is disabled.

---

Example:

use strict;
use warnings;
use Getopt::Long qw(:config no_auto_abbrev);

my ( $file, $fish );

GetOptions( "file=s" => \$file, "fish=s" => \$fish );

And the tests:

$ perl test.pl -fi 24
Unknown option: fi

$ perl test.pl -fis 24
Unknown option: fis

Answer 2

If you want to turn this auto abbreviation feature off you'll have to configure Getopt::Long using

use Getopt::Long qw(:config no_auto_abbrev) ;