How to access multiple option values from hash specification

Question

    use Getopt::Long;

    GetOptions(\%gOptions,
        "help",
        "size=i",
        "filename=s{2}",
    );

I am passing options like -

--size 200 --filename abc.txt def.txt

I tried accessing filename from the hash specification through

my @array = $gOptions{filename};
print $array[0];
print $array[1];

However, this is not working. How to access multiple option values from a hash specification %gOptions?

Note : I can map filename to separate array like this -

"filename=s{2}" => \@filearray,
print "$filearray[1];"

but I am not preferring this method.

Answer 1

The documentation on this form of usage says:

For options that take list or hash values, it is necessary to indicate this by appending an @ or % sign after the type

and it will then use a reference to an array or hash in the appropriate field to hold values.

So...

#!/usr/bin/env perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use feature qw/say/;
use Getopt::Long;

my %gOptions;

GetOptions(\%gOptions,
  "help",
  "size=i",
  # The @ has to come after the type, and before the repeat count.
  # Note the single quotes so @{2} isn't subject to variable interpolation
  'filename=s@{2}', 
);

say for $gOptions{"filename"}->@* if exists $gOptions{"filename"};
# or @{$gOptions{"filename"}} if your perl is too old for postderef syntax

Example:

$ perl foo.pl --filename a b
a
b