.NET Command Line Options

When I’m writing a console app and I need some flexibility in “parsing” arguments…I want it done ASAP and without much extra work. I tried a few command line option libraries and it always seem those libraries get in your way, so I wrote my own. Its based on the simple premise “convention over configuration”.

Basically it can be used as follows:

var cmdLine = new CmdLineParser();
cmdLine.Setup<int>("option1");
cmdLine.Setup<string>("option2");
cmdLine.Parse(args);

then I can use the options…

Console.WriteLine(cmdLine.Opts.option1);
Console.WriteLine(cmdLine.Opts.option2);

Setup can take 3 arguments

1. option name
2. required (optional)
3. help message (optional)

Parse just takes a string array. Parse will throw an exception (CmdLineParserException), if it encounters the following cases:

1. an required option that is missing
2. an option with a invalid type (an option which takes a number but has a string)
3. an option that is specified more then once
4. –help or -h is encounter (then use the HelpMessage property to print the message) The following show exceptional cases…

var cmdLine = CmdLineParser();
cmdLine.Setup<int>("option",true,"help message");

cmdLine.Parse({});
cmdLine.Parse({"--option", "3", "--option","4"});
cmdLine.Parse({"--option", "abc"});
cmdLine.Parse({"--help"});

more information can be found at: https://bitbucket.org/sanjosep43/simplecmdline/wiki/Home

It can also be downloaded form NuGet (SimpleCmdLine).