Perl for C Programmers

The @ARGV Variable

The special variable @ARGV contains the command-line arguments for the program. For example, if you run a script with the command

$ perl doit.pl alpha beta gamma

Then

$ARGV[0] = "alpha"; 
$ARGV[1] = "beta"; 
$ARGV[2] = "gamma";

To get the number of arguments, use the notation $#ARGV (there is no argc). Note that unlike in C programming, the first argument is not the name of the program. If you need the name of the program, it’s assigned to the variable $0.