Arg_parser

Arg_parser is an argument parser that follows POSIX and GNU conventions for command line arguments. There exist C++ and C versions of Arg_parser. The C++ version is implemented as a C++ class, while the C version is implemented as a single struct plus associated functions. Both are simpler, easier to use, and safer that 'getopt_long'.

For maximum stability, Arg_parser is self-contained. It extracts all the information it needs from its arguments to avoid refering to them later. This avoids index-out-of-bounds errors.

Arg_parser does not modify its arguments, nor uses any global variables. So you may create more than one parser in your program if you need or want to.

The C++ version of Arg_parser can also parse options from configuration files.

To use Arg_parser in your own programs simply copy the files 'arg_parser.h' and 'arg_parser.cc' (or 'carg_parser.h' and 'carg_parser.c' for the C version) in your source tree. (These files have a link exception to the GPL, see below). See the file 'main.cc' ('cmain.c') for an example of use.

Arg_parser was developed as the argument parser for GNU moe, because moe's argument parsing is rather complex. (Then I used it in my other projects, including ddrescue, ed, lzip, and ocrad, with excellent results).

Download

The latest released version of Arg_parser can be found here. You may also subscribe to Freecode and receive an email every time a new version is released.

How to Get Help

An online manual for Arg_parser can be found here.

For general discussion of bugs in Arg_parser the mailing list arg-parser-bug@nongnu.org is the most appropriate forum. Please send messages as plain text. Please do not send messages encoded as HTML nor encoded as base64 MIME nor included as multiple formats. Please include a descriptive subject line. If all of the subject are "bug in arg_parser" it is impossible to differentiate them.

An archive of the bug report mailing list is available at http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/arg-parser-bug.

How to Help

To contact the author, either to report a bug or to contribute fixes or improvements, send mail to arg-parser-bug@nongnu.org. Please send messages as plain text. If posting patches they should be in unified diff format against the latest version. They should include a text description.

See also the Arg_parser project page at Savannah.

Licensing

This library is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

As a special exception, you may use this free software library without restriction. Specifically, if other files instantiate templates or use macros or inline functions from this library, or you compile this library and link it with other files to produce an executable, this library does not by itself cause the resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Public License. This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the executable file might be covered by the GNU General Public License.

You are free to copy, modify and distribute all or part of this article without limitation.

Updated: 2013/02/24