clparser

• This is supposed to be a basic parser of command line arguments for shell scripts
• The idea is that you give it a spec in a certain format and command line arguments that were inputted to the script and it parses them by turning them into simple variablename=value
• This makes it so that you can just call it with

eval "$(echo "$spec" | clparser -- "$@")"

• This way it will call the variablename=value and you can go on without having to worry about positioning or anything

• where spec='flags: f,flag g qwerty h,hist; parameters: q,asdf u nothing zzz,z;' and prints out

flag=false
f=false
h=false
help=false
g=false
qwerty=true
asdf="${2}"
q="${2}"
Z='test'
zzz='test'
z='test'
u='defval'
nothing="${8}"
set -- "${4}" "${6}" "${10}" "${11}"

if called with arguments -fgq whatever --qwerty 'i dunno' --zzz=test words --nothing else -- --test hi which results in f,flag = false g = false qwerty = true h,help = false q,asdf = whatever u = defval nothing = else zzz,z,Z = test positional args: i dunno words --test hi

• example scripts have been added showing off the features

  • try running the scripts to see the output and how it can be used
  • for zsh and ksh, see the example.bash script, it uses the same syntax
  • for xonsh, probably just use argparse, its built in and very good

• if clparser sees -- in the args, it will stop processing the args and just output everything after as positional args

  • this is used to let clparser know all the remaining args should be passed through
  • this is how clparser knows the difference between it's own args to parse and the scripts args
  • any args not starting with - and not after a parameter will be turned into a positional arg

• clparser uses direct references to the input positional arguments as much as possible to avoid issues with whitespace or other symbol expansion

• flags are returned as true or false

  • use in sh like "$force" && rm -f, running the true and false commands rather than testing the string

if "$force"; then
    echo force
fi

• bash, zsh, ksh, and xonsh use associative arrays for flags and params (see example.* scripts for examples)
  • sh, csh, and fish all use plain variables because they don't have associative arrays and variables are sufficient
• bash, zsh, ksh, xonsh, fish, and csh use arrays for the positional arguments
  • sh will override argv to it can preserve whitespace in the input arguments
  • --override-argv will force overriding argv in all shells
  • --maintain-argv will force maintaining argv in all shells
• the shell syntax language is determined by the calling process
  • NOTE: this doesn't seem to work for xonsh, at least while installed through the Appimage
  • --shell specifies a specific shell to use
• clparser --help will show all the options
  • NOTE: currently --help-msg is unimplemented

C library

• clparser was written so it can be used as a C lib
  • clparser uses the library as intended for its own arguments
• #include "process.h" and add process.o and map.o to the compilation command