README

                              Getopt::Tabular
                                version 0.2
                               19 June, 1997

Copyright (c) 1995-97 Greg Ward. All rights reserved.  This is free
software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as
Perl itself.

Getopt::Tabular is a Perl 5 module for table-driven argument parsing,
vaguely inspired by John Ousterhout's Tk_ParseArgv.  See Tabular.pod for
details.  It is available from

    ftp://ftp.bic.mni.mcgill.ca/users/greg

and should be available through CPAN at

    http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/id/GWARD


Some nice features of Getopt::Tabular are:
  
* Command-line arguments are carefully type-checked, both by pattern and
  number---e.g. if an option requires two integers, GetOptions makes sure
  that exactly two integers follow it!

* The valid command-line arguments are specified in a data structure
  separate from the call to GetOptions; this makes it easier to have very
  long lists of options, and to parse options from multiple sources
  (e.g. the command line, an environment variable, and a configuration
  file).

* Getopt::Tabular can intelligently generate help text based on your option
  descriptions.

* The type system is extensible, and if you can define your desired
  argument type using a single Perl regular expression then it's
  particularly easy to extend.

* Options can be abbreviated and come in any order.

* A "spoof" mode in which arguments are parsed without side-effects.

To test and install Getopt::Tabular:

    perl ./Makefile.PL
    make test
    make install

That's it!  The test suite isn't very complete yet, but it's a start.  The
documentation is quite extensive; only a few minor features aren't covered.
Also, there is a demo program that shows off several of the module's
features.

Email problems, questions, bug reports, etc. to greg@bic.mni.mcgill.ca.