cxxopts/README.md
2016-05-12 18:06:13 -04:00

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# Quick start
This is a lightweight C++ option parser library, supporting the standard GNU
style syntax for options.
Options can be given as:
--long
--long=argument
--long argument
-a
-ab
-abc argument
where c takes an argument, but a and b do not.
Additionally, anything after `--` will be parsed as a positional argument.
## Basics
#include <cxxopts.hpp>
Create a cxxopts::Options instance.
cxxopts::Options options("MyProgram", "One line description of MyProgram");
Then use `add_options`.
options.add_options()
("d,debug", "Enable debugging")
("f,file", "File name", cxxopts::value<std::string>())
;
Options can be declared with a short and/or long option. A description must be
provided. The third argument is the value, if omitted it is boolean. Any type
can be given as long as it can be parsed, with operator>>.
To parse the command line do:
options.parse(argc, argv);
To retrieve an option use `options.count("option")` to get the number of times
it appeared, and
options["opt"].as<type>()
to get its value. If "opt" doesn't exist, or isn't of the right type, then an
exception will be thrown.
## Help groups
Options can be placed into groups for the purposes of displaying help messages.
To place options in a group, pass the group as a string to `add_options`. Then,
when displaying the help, pass the groups that you would like displayed as a
vector to the `help` function.
## Positional Arguments
Positional arguments can be optionally parsed into one or more options.
To set up positional arguments, call
options.parse_positional({"first", "second", "last"})
where "last" should be the name of an option with a container type, and the
others should have a single value.
# Linking
This is a header only library.
# Requirements
The only build requirement is a C++ compiler that supports C++11 regular
expressions. For example GCC >= 4.9 or clang with libc++.
# TODO list
* Allow unrecognised options.
* Various help strings.
* Unicode aware for help strings.