diff --git a/misc-scripts/xref_mapping/xref_parser.pl b/misc-scripts/xref_mapping/xref_parser.pl
index deb2ff848e93acc593a2457c12787f667a4feec1..b955d6afe0667da5bb47b210c56569cbf12500e3 100644
--- a/misc-scripts/xref_mapping/xref_parser.pl
+++ b/misc-scripts/xref_mapping/xref_parser.pl
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 use strict;
 
-use Getopt::Long;
+use Getopt::Long qw(:config pass_through);
 use XrefParser::BaseParser;
 
 my ( $host,             $port,          $dbname,
@@ -41,6 +41,16 @@ GetOptions(
     'unzip' => \$unzip,                   # Force decompression of files
     'help'  => sub { usage(); exit(0); } );
 
+if($ARGV[0]){
+  print STDERR "Unknown command line arguments:-\n";
+  foreach my $a (@ARGV){
+    print STDERR "\t".$a."\n";
+  }
+  print STDERR "Stopping script. Please fix the command line.\n";
+  print STDERR "use -help for full list of command line options.\n";;
+  exit(1);
+}
+
 my @species = split(/,/,join(',',$species));
 my @sources  = split(/,/,join(',',$sources));
 my @notsource  = split(/,/,join(',',$notsource));