argparse - A command line arguments parsing library in C (compatible with C++).
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.
- 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.