The best CLI parser for Java [duplicate]

Answer 1

JLine is a library for building shell-like applications in Java.

• Groovy is using it for it's shell implementation : groovysh.
• JLine is also used by OpenTelegard/2 (JRuby).

Since 2002, the project was hosted on SourceForge.net and last release was JLine-1.0 on April 2011.

But in 2009, the project has started the migration to GitHub.com and has released the series 2.x since November 2009 (version 2.0). Last version 2.x when writing this answer is 2.14.2 in May 2016.

In October 2016, a new series 3.x has been released.

Answer 2

Here are some of the most popular. They are all pretty feature complete, and having used the top two I can recommend them.

• Commons CLI
  http://commons.apache.org/cli/

• Java Gems
  http://code.google.com/p/javagems/

• picocli (with colorized usage help and autocomplete)
  http://picocli.info/

• JArgs
  http://jargs.sourceforge.net/

• GetOpt
  http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/hacking/download.html

EDIT: For completeness, here are some others I've come across

• JOpt Simple
  http://jopt-simple.sourceforge.net/

• Args4J
  https://args4j.dev.java.net/

• ArgParser
  http://people.cs.ubc.ca/~lloyd/java/argparser.html

• Natural CLI
  http://naturalcli.sourceforge.net/

• TE-Code
  http://te-code.sourceforge.net/

• JSAP
  http://www.martiansoftware.com/jsap/

• CLAJR
  http://clajr.sourceforge.net/

• CmdLn
  http://ostermiller.org/utils/CmdLn.html

• JewelCli
  http://jewelcli.sourceforge.net/

• JCommando
  http://jcommando.sourceforge.net/

• Parse-cmd
  http://code.google.com/p/parse-cmd/

Answer 3

I don't think scalability is a factor here. you want something which is feature complete and easy to use. I mostly use jargs but I generally dislike it's API (using it out of habit).

you can also try java getopt impl, which I did not personally used.