                              Getopt::Tabular
                                version 0.1
                             11 November, 1996

Copyright (c) 1995-96 Greg Ward. All rights reserved.  This program 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/modules/by-author/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, the module makes sure
  that exactly two integers follow it!

* The valid command-line arguments are specified in a data structure
  separate from the call to the module's main routine (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.

* To make your program look smarter, options can be abbreviated and come in
  any order.

To install Getopt::Tabular:

    perl ./Makefile.PL
    make install

That's it!  There's no test code yet, but there is a demo program that
shows off several of the module's features.  And the documentation is quite
extensive; only a few minor features aren't covered.

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