use Getopt::Std; getopts (":s:n:",\%args); if (defined $args{s}){ $string = $args{n}; } if (defined $args{n}) { $number = $args{n}; } if (!defined $args{s} or !defined $args{s}) { print "Usage: perl $0 -s string -n number\n"; exit; } print "This is a string = $string \nThis is a number = $number\n";