jeffa is quite right...here's what I tend to do, since the next natural thing is to assign each option out into a meaningfully named scalar

my %opts;
getopts("d:a:s:e:", \%opt);
my $Directory = $opts{'d'} || '/home/maverick';
my $Address   = $opts{'a'} || 'somewhere@overtherainbow.com';
my $Silent    = $opts{'s'} || 0;
my $Extended  = $opts{'e'} || 0;
[download]

This way I don't have to remember what's in $opts{'d'} and neither does whoever reads my code later. Plus the defaults are really easy to spot.

/\/\averick
perl -l -e "eval pack('h*','072796e6470272f2c5f2c5166756279636b672');"

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