A minimalist command line parser written in C
I cought myself writing command line utilities quite often and having to rely on positional arguments.
There are only 2 public functions.
ARGCmdLine* argCmdLineParse(int argc, wchar_t** argv);
and
void argCmdLineFree(ARGCmdLine* cmdLine);
Just forward you main arguments to argCmdLineParse and it will return an ARGCmdLine structure filled with parsed information about your command line.
- Options starts with '-'
- Options can be followed by a value
- supported values are:
- integers
- floats
- booleans (true or false)
- strings (with or without quotes)
- supported values are:
- Options can be followed by multiple values of different types
- The parser ignores arguments at the start that does not begin with a '-'. This allows programs to require positional arguments.
int wmain(int argc, wchar_t** argv)
{
// Parse the command line
ARGCmdLine* cmdLine = argCmdLineParse(argc, argv);
// Do stuff with the parsed command line
for (int i = 0; i < cmdLine->numOptions; i++)
{
wprintf(L"Option: %s\n", cmdLine->options[i].option);
ARGOption* option = &cmdLine->options[i];
for (int j = 0; j < option->numValues; j++)
{
switch (cmdLine->options[i].values[j].type)
{
case INTEGER:
printf("Value %d: %d (Integer)\n", j + 1, option->values[j].value.intValue);
break;
case FLOAT:
printf("Value %d: %f (Float)\n", j + 1, option->values[j].value.floatValue);
break;
case BOOL:
printf("Value %d: %s (Boolean)\n", j + 1, option->values[j].value.boolValue ? "true" : "false");
break;
case STRING:
wprintf(L"Value %d: %s (String)\n", j + 1, option->values[j].value.stringValue);
break;
default:
printf("Value %d: None\n", j + 1);
break;
}
}
}
// Free command line object
argCmdLineFree(cmdLine);
return 0;
}
A programm called cmdlineparse.exe using the code above would display the following output based on the provided arguments:
cmdlineparse "I'm a positional argument and will be ignored!" -foo bar -number 100 -someFloat 32.9374 -multi "Hello, Sailor!" /usr/bin/foo 42 --whatever true
Option: foo
Value 1: bar (String)
Option: number
Value 1: 100 (Integer)
Option: someFloat
Value 1: 32.937401 (Float)
Option: muli
Value 1: Hello, Sailor! (String)
Value 2: /usr/bin/foo (String)
Value 3: 42 (Integer)
Option: -whatever
Value 1: true (Boolean)
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