Best way to parse command-line parameters? [closed]

Answer 1

I have never liked ruby like option parsers. Most developers that used them never write a proper man page for their scripts and end up with pages long options not organized in a proper way because of their parser.

I have always preferred Perl's way of doing things with Perl's Getopt::Long.

I am working on a scala implementation of it. The early API looks something like this:

def print_version() = () => println("version is 0.2")

def main(args: Array[String]) {
  val (options, remaining) = OptionParser.getOptions(args,
    Map(
      "-f|--flag"       -> 'flag,
      "-s|--string=s"   -> 'string,
      "-i|--int=i"      -> 'int,
      "-f|--float=f"    -> 'double,
      "-p|-procedure=p" -> { () => println("higher order function" }
      "-h=p"            -> { () => print_synopsis() }
      "--help|--man=p"  -> { () => launch_manpage() },
      "--version=p"     -> print_version,
    ))

So calling script like this:

$ script hello -f --string=mystring -i 7 --float 3.14 --p --version world -- --nothing

Would print:

higher order function
version is 0.2

And return:

remaining = Array("hello", "world", "--nothing")

options = Map('flag   -> true,
              'string -> "mystring",
              'int    -> 7,
              'double -> 3.14)

The project is hosted in github scala-getoptions.