From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2007-09-07T08:21:14+09:00
Subject: Re: minimalistic command line option parsing via -s

Ari Brown wrote:
> 
> On Sep 6, 2007, at 11:55 AM, Joel VanderWerf wrote:
> 
>> It's nice to have that for very short scripts, but for about 50 LOC 
>> you can paste in an options parser that permits --foo style options, 
>> -xyz as an alias for "-x -y -z", option arguments, argument conversion 
>> procs and defaults, "-x123" as an alias for "-x 123", and even a way 
>> to interpret "-v -v -v" as thrice verbose. One thing you can't have is 
>> _optional_ arguments to options (e.g. an option that takes 0 or 1 
>> arguments).
> 
> 
> A really nice tool I stumbled on while e-stalking Ara Howard (hehe 
> sorry) was his main library (gem install main). He's got some example 
> code of it on his site, and it makes options really really easy!

Just took a look at it... very powerful. It handles arguments (things 
without -- or -) as well as options. It's also fairly complex, and not 
the sort of thing you paste into a small script (almost 2000 lines).

Main looks like more of a complete framework for CLI (possibly like the 
commandline gem--has anyone compared these two?). By contrast, argos 
does just one thing: turn an arg string into a hash, based on a spec.

-- 
       vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407