Lightweight CLI Parser

A CLI parser which is purely written in C and focused to be lightweight. Can be used in C++ applications too.

How to use

//include the library
#include <cli.h>

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
    //create the CLI struct
    //the integral value is the count of arguments you want to define
    CLI* cli = CLI_Create(3);

    //add 3 arguments:
    //if you add more arguments than you've defined in the create method, 
    //the program will probably crash. The information is known before 
    //compile time, so make sure to doublecheck.
    CLI_AddArgument(cli, 'h', ARG_TYPE_COMMAND);
    CLI_AddArgument(cli, 'v', ARG_TYPE_REQUIRED);
    CLI_AddArgument(cli, 'r', ARG_TYPE_OPTION);
    
    //parse cli args
    cli_errors errors = CLI_Parse(cli, argc, argv);

    if(errors != 0)
    {
        //do your error checking here. As the name indicates, the value 
        //could have more than one error. You can use the "HAS_FLAG" macro
    }

    //if the 'h' command was set
    if(CLI_OptionSet(cli, 'h'))
    {
        printf("Some useful help text to print to the user\n");
        return 0;
    }

    //initialize char* which will point to the value string
    //you should copy the value if you want to persist it
    char* value = NULL;
    if(CLI_TryGetArgument(cli, 'v', &value))
    {
        //this section will only be reached if value was set successfully
        //if 'r' was set, reverse the value
        if(CLI_OptionSet(cli, 'r'))
            printf("%s", strrev(value));
        else
            printf("%s", value);
    }

    //clean up allocated commands and value strings
    CLI_Destroy(cli);
    return 0;
}

Limitations

To reduce any overhead there are some limitations:

• Commands do start with a hyphen "-"
• Commands are only one character long "a"
• There are no automatic value conversions
• The count of commands should be known before compile time => no dynamic resize. So if you add your fifth command but you only initialized the CLI struct with four, you will experience unexpected behavior.

Examples

• Example for C
• Example for C++
• And a few tests

Build

Project uses CMake to generate platform and compiler-specific build files.

Building on Windows (Visual Studio)

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/Seng3694/CLI
   

2. Generate the build files (depending on your Visual Studio Version the cmake command differs. In this case "Visual Studio 15" will generate the Visual Studio 2017 project files)

   mkdir bin
   cd bin
   cmake -G"Visual Studio 15" ../CLI
   

3. You can either open the .sln solution file and build the ALL_BUILD target or just do it with cmake:

   cmake --build . --config Release
   

License

This library is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.