From: Daniel Berger <Daniel.Berger@...>
Date: 2005-11-05T03:42:14+09:00
Subject: [ANN] getopt-1.3.0

Hi all,

I'm pleased to announce the release of getopt-1.3.0.  This release includes a 
Getopt::Long class.

== What is it?
A sane replacement for command line parsing libraries like getoptlong and optparse.

== How does it work
It's similar to the old Getoptlong class, but it's less verbose, more flexible 
and (*shock*) it returns a hash.

== Synopsis
require "getopt/long"
include Getopt

opts = Long.getopts(
    [ "--name",    "-n", REQUIRED ],
    [ "--age",     "-a", OPTIONAL ],
    [ "--more",    "-m", INCREMENT],
    [ "--verbose", "-v", BOOLEAN]
)

# User passes "--name dan --age=35 -m -m -v"
opts == {
    "n"    => "dan",
    "name" => "dan",
    "a"    => "35",
    "age"  => "35",
    "m"    => 2,
    "more" => 2,
    "v"    => true,
    "verbose" => true
}

The dups are there to give you maximum flexibility with regards to how you 
access your option, e.g. you could do:

if opts["v"] # or
if opts["verbose"]

This, along with the removal of "--" and "-", saves on the carpal.

You'll also notice that you can use the "=" syntax for long options, e.g. 
"--age=35", if you happen to prefer that style.

See the README file for more details.

== Where can I get it?
You should be able to do "gem install getopt" very soon.  Or, you can get the 
tarball via the RAA.

== Why I wrote this
My main gripe with the getoptlong library currently in the standard library is 
that it doesn't return a hash, yet gives you partial hash behavior.  This was 
both confusing and annoying, since the first thing I (and everyone else)
does is collect the results into a hash for later processing. Just yesterday 
Ara Howard did this in ruby-talk:163940.  It's also too verbose.

My main gripe with the optparse library (also in the standard library) is
that it treats command line processing like event processing.  It's too
complex, when 90% of the time all you want to do is slurp the command line 
options into a hash.

So, I did something utterly novel with this library.  I collected the command 
line options ... (wait for it) ... into a hash!  Then I give that hash to you, 
aliases and all.  I did get some ideas from Perl's Getopt::Long library, but 
this is in no way a port of that module (which supports POSIX parsing, GNU 
parsing, more option types, etc).  My goal was to provide the functionality 
that I felt would cover the vast majority of common cases, yet still provide a 
little extra spice with switch types (REQUIRED, OPTIONAL, etc).

== Future Plans
There are a few extra things I plan to add but I do not plan on this library 
ever becoming as feature rich as, say, Perl's Getopt::Long module.  I'm more 
interested in just making it usable and easy.

Enjoy!

Dan