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# Class CL_CommandLine

Helper class to parse command line arguments More...

Derived from: none
Derived by: none
Group: Core (System)

#include <ClanLib/core.h>

Construction:

CL_CommandLine |

Attributes:

get_key | Return the key of the current option
get_argument | Return the argument to the current option

Operations:

set_help_indent | Change the indention used for the help message, default is 18
add_usage | Add a usage line to the help output, usage is for example "[OPTIONS]... FILE", the program name will get appended automatically
add_doc | Adds extra documentation to the help output, should only be used at the beginning or at the end, to
add_group | Starts a new group of options, the grouptopic gets printed above the group of options in the print_help() output
add_option | Adds a option to the parser
parse_args | Parse the options arcording to the options added with add_option(), result of the parsing is accessible via next() and get_key()/get_argument()
print_help | Print the help output, normaly done via a --help option
next | Goto the next option

Detailed description:

!group=Core/System! !header=core.h!

The CL_CommandLine class helps to parse command line arguments, namely the argc/argv pair that you get from main(). CL_CommandLine mimics getopt_long() behaviour as closely as possible, while providing a cleaner interface and a few additional features, like automatic generation of '--help' output. CL_CommandLine can parse long arguments in the following styles:

program --file FILENAME
program --file=FILENAME

Short arguments are handled like this:

program -f FILENAME

Concatenating short arguments is also supported, so that:

program -f -a -b FILENAME

is equivalent to:

program -fab FILENAME

Non-option arguments (aka rest arguments) are supported as well:

program SOMEFILE SOMEOTHERFILE ...

To avoid ambiguity when a filename starts with '-' CL_CommandLine stops parsing arguments after the first encounter of a '--', so in

program -f -b -- -f -b

In the above example the first '-f -b' options are treated as normal while the ones after the '--' are treated as rest arguments (aka filenames in most programs).

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