Dear mailinglist, Currently I'm eluded by the ARGV parser GetoptLong. All the example show me the same structure that just itterates through all the parsed flags and then overwrite a previously set standard value when a certain case branch gets hit. Am I completely wrong or is this a horrible way of doing things? I would like for example to first check if a certain flag is set (--help for example) before I get to setting and parsing values. I would think that the parser creates a Hash table and that I could acces it in this style: if (opts[:help]) then puts "some usage help" else parse all other values end Am I off track here? regards Boris -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.