argparse - A command line arguments parsing library in C (compatible with C++).
Description
This module is inspired by parse-options.c (git) and python's argparse module.
Arguments parsing is common task in cli program, but traditional getopt
libraries are not easy to use. This library provides high-level arguments
parsing solutions.
The program defines what arguments it requires, and argparse
will figure
out how to parse those out of argc
and argv
, it also automatically
generates help and usage messages and issues errors when users give the
program invalid arguments.
Features
- handles both optional and positional arguments
- produces highly informative usage messages
- issues errors when given invalid arguments
There are basically three types of options:
- boolean options
- options with mandatory argument
- options with optional argument
There are basically two forms of options:
- short option consist of one dash (
-
) and one alphanumeric character. - long option begin with two dashes (
--
) and some alphanumeric characters.
Short options may be bundled, e.g. -a -b
can be specified as -ab
.
Options are case-sensitive.
Options and non-option arguments can clearly be separated using the --
option.
Examples
#include "argparse.h"
static const char *const usage[] = {
"test_argparse [options] [[--] args]",
"test_argparse [options]",
NULL,
};
#define PERM_READ (1<<0)
#define PERM_WRITE (1<<1)
#define PERM_EXEC (1<<2)
int
main(int argc, const char **argv)
{
int force = 0;
int test = 0;
int num = 0;
const char *path = NULL;
int perms = 0;
struct argparse_option options[] = {
OPT_HELP(),
OPT_GROUP("Basic options"),
OPT_BOOLEAN('f', "force", &force, "force to do"),
OPT_BOOLEAN('t', "test", &test, "test only"),
OPT_STRING('p', "path", &path, "path to read"),
OPT_INTEGER('n', "num", &num, "selected num"),
OPT_GROUP("Bits options"),
OPT_BIT(0, "read", &perms, "read perm", NULL, PERM_READ, OPT_NONEG),
OPT_BIT(0, "write", &perms, "write perm", NULL, PERM_WRITE),
OPT_BIT(0, "exec", &perms, "exec perm", NULL, PERM_EXEC),
OPT_END(),
};
struct argparse argparse;
argparse_init(&argparse, options, usage, 0);
argparse_describe(&argparse, "\nA brief description of what the program does and how it works.", "\nAdditional description of the program after the description of the arguments.");
argc = argparse_parse(&argparse, argc, argv);
if (force != 0)
printf("force: %d\n", force);
if (test != 0)
printf("test: %d\n", test);
if (path != NULL)
printf("path: %s\n", path);
if (num != 0)
printf("num: %d\n", num);
if (argc != 0) {
printf("argc: %d\n", argc);
int i;
for (i = 0; i < argc; i++) {
printf("argv[%d]: %s\n", i, *(argv + i));
}
}
if (perms) {
printf("perms: %d\n", perms);
}
return 0;
}