Starting a subroutine from the command line 1

[Ramnarayan]

I am trying to modify all the scripts to work in a way that from the command line, I should be able to call a subroutine in the perl script to be executed without having to pass through all the sub routines in the program. For example,

abc.pl
======
&create_pdfs;
&create_gifs;
&create_pdf_inv;
&create_gif_inv;

sub create_pdfs(){...}
sub create_gifs(){...}
sub create_pdf_inv(){...}
sub create_gif_inv(){...}

Now what I want to do is that from the command line, when I execute abc.pl, I should be able to execute only the subroutine create_pdfs() only and the other subroutines should never be executed.

Can someone tell me how to pass the subroutines to a command line?

Thanks for your support and time.

 

[EBGreen]

You could get the subroutine name from the command line then use switch case statements to run the appropriate subroutine.

 

[Ramnarayan]

Thanks TomThumbKP for the answer. But I am unable to understand what you are saying. Can you explain a little bit using some examples.

Did you mean that I have to pass the subroutines as a arguements to the command line? If so, please tell me how I can do that?

 

[EBGreen]

If this is your script:

switch ($ARGV[0]){
    case "foo"  { foo(); }
    case "bar"  { bar(); }
    else        { print "I don't know what you want\n";}
}

sub foo(){
    print "foo\n";
}
sub bar(){
    print "bar\n";
}

Then call it like this:

perl foobar.pl foo

and it will run only the foo subroutine. A few caveats. I am at work and do not have access to perl right now so this is untested. This is the bare minimum implementation. There is no error handling in it at all.

 

[Ramnarayan]

Thanks tom. It is really help ful. So all i have to do is modify the scripts to have nested cases and call them in the command line.

Not much of a rework. Thanks a ton!

 

[missbarbell]

Have a look at Getopt::Long for how to control commandline arguments.

BTW switch only available if you use Switch.pm. In a regular script you'll need to have something like:

my %opts;
GetOptions (\%opts, 'pdf', 'gif', 'ipdf', 'igif');
&create_pdfs	if($opts{pdf});
&create_gifs	if($opts{gif};
&create_pdf_inv	if($opts{ipdf};
&create_gif_inv	if($opts{igif};

You then pass the arguments as:

perl abc.pl -pdf -gif -ipdf -igif

Omit the appropriate arguments when you don't want those subroutines to run.

Barbie
Leader of Birmingham Perl Mongers

http://birmingham.pm.org

 

[uida1154]

This switch.pm is perfect. I always hated perl for not having it, the only thing I could found perl lacking.

Thanx misbarbell!