1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586
587
588
589
590
591
592
593
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
638
639
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672
673
674
675
676
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684
685
686
687
688
689
690
691
692
693
694
695
696
697
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713
714
715
716
717
718
719
720
721
722
723
724
725
726
727
728
729
730
731
732
733
734
735
736
737
738
739
740
741
742
743
744
745
746
747
748
749
750
751
752
753
754
755
756
757
758
759
760
761
762
763
764
765
766
767
768
769
770
771
772
773
774
775
776
777
778
779
780
781
782
783
784
785
786
787
788
789
790
791
792
793
794
795
796
797
798
799
800
801
802
803
804
805
806
807
808
809
810
811
812
813
814
815
816
817
818
819
820
821
822
823
824
825
826
827
828
829
830
831
832
833
834
835
836
837
838
839
840
841
842
843
844
845
846
847
848
849
850
851
852
853
854
855
856
857
858
859
860
861
862
863
864
865
866
867
868
869
870
871
872
873
874
875
876
877
878
879
880
881
882
883
884
885
886
887
888
889
890
891
892
893
894
895
896
897
898
899
900
901
902
903
904
905
906
907
908
909
910
911
912
913
914
915
916
917
918
919
920
921
922
923
924
925
926
927
928
929
930
931
932
933
934
935
936
937
938
939
940
941
942
943
944
945
946
947
948
949
950
951
952
953
954
955
956
957
958
959
960
961
962
963
964
965
966
967
968
969
970
971
972
973
974
975
976
977
978
979
980
981
982
983
984
985
986
987
988
989
990
991
992
993
994
995
996
997
998
999
1000
1001
1002
1003
1004
1005
1006
1007
1008
1009
1010
1011
1012
1013
1014
1015
1016
1017
1018
1019
1020
1021
1022
1023
1024
1025
1026
1027
1028
1029
1030
1031
1032
1033
1034
1035
1036
1037
1038
1039
1040
1041
1042
1043
1044
1045
1046
1047
1048
1049
1050
1051
1052
1053
1054
1055
1056
1057
1058
1059
1060
1061
1062
1063
1064
1065
1066
1067
1068
1069
1070
1071
1072
1073
1074
1075
1076
1077
1078
1079
1080
1081
1082
1083
1084
1085
1086
1087
1088
1089
1090
1091
1092
1093
1094
1095
1096
1097
1098
1099
1100
1101
1102
1103
1104
1105
1106
1107
1108
1109
1110
1111
1112
1113
1114
1115
1116
1117
1118
1119
1120
1121
1122
1123
1124
1125
1126
1127
1128
1129
1130
1131
1132
1133
1134
1135
1136
1137
1138
1139
1140
1141
1142
1143
1144
1145
1146
1147
1148
1149
1150
1151
1152
1153
1154
1155
1156
1157
1158
1159
1160
1161
1162
1163
1164
1165
1166
1167
1168
1169
1170
1171
1172
1173
1174
1175
1176
1177
1178
1179
1180
1181
1182
1183
1184
1185
1186
1187
1188
1189
1190
1191
1192
1193
1194
1195
1196
1197
1198
1199
1200
1201
1202
1203
1204
1205
1206
1207
1208
1209
1210
1211
1212
1213
1214
1215
1216
1217
1218
1219
1220
1221
1222
1223
1224
1225
1226
1227
1228
1229
1230
1231
1232
1233
1234
1235
1236
1237
1238
1239
1240
1241
1242
1243
1244
1245
1246
1247
1248
1249
1250
1251
1252
1253
1254
1255
1256
1257
1258
1259
1260
1261
1262
1263
1264
1265
1266
1267
1268
1269
1270
1271
1272
1273
1274
1275
1276
1277
1278
1279
1280
1281
1282
1283
1284
1285
1286
1287
1288
1289
1290
1291
1292
1293
1294
1295
1296
1297
1298
1299
1300
1301
1302
1303
1304
1305
1306
1307
1308
1309
1310
1311
1312
1313
1314
1315
1316
1317
1318
1319
1320
1321
1322
1323
1324
1325
1326
1327
1328
1329
1330
1331
1332
1333
1334
1335
1336
1337
1338
1339
1340
1341
1342
1343
1344
1345
1346
1347
1348
1349
1350
1351
1352
1353
1354
1355
1356
1357
1358
1359
1360
1361
1362
1363
1364
1365
1366
1367
1368
1369
1370
1371
1372
1373
1374
1375
1376
1377
1378
1379
1380
1381
1382
1383
1384
1385
1386
1387
1388
1389
1390
1391
1392
1393
1394
1395
1396
1397
1398
1399
1400
1401
1402
1403
1404
1405
1406
1407
1408
1409
1410
1411
1412
1413
1414
1415
1416
1417
1418
1419
1420
1421
1422
1423
1424
1425
1426
1427
1428
1429
1430
1431
1432
1433
1434
1435
1436
1437
1438
1439
1440
1441
1442
1443
1444
1445
1446
1447
1448
1449
1450
1451
1452
1453
1454
1455
1456
1457
1458
1459
1460
1461
1462
1463
1464
1465
1466
1467
1468
1469
1470
1471
1472
1473
1474
1475
1476
1477
1478
1479
1480
1481
1482
1483
1484
1485
1486
1487
1488
1489
1490
1491
1492
1493
1494
1495
1496
1497
1498
1499
1500
1501
1502
1503
1504
1505
1506
1507
1508
1509
1510
1511
1512
1513
1514
1515
1516
1517
1518
1519
1520
1521
1522
1523
1524
1525
1526
1527
1528
1529
1530
1531
1532
1533
1534
1535
1536
1537
1538
1539
1540
1541
1542
1543
1544
1545
1546
1547
1548
1549
1550
1551
1552
1553
1554
1555
1556
1557
1558
1559
1560
1561
1562
1563
1564
1565
1566
1567
1568
1569
1570
1571
1572
1573
1574
1575
1576
1577
1578
1579
1580
1581
1582
1583
1584
1585
1586
1587
1588
1589
1590
1591
1592
1593
1594
1595
1596
1597
1598
1599
1600
1601
1602
1603
1604
1605
1606
1607
1608
1609
1610
1611
1612
1613
1614
1615
1616
1617
1618
1619
1620
1621
1622
1623
1624
1625
1626
1627
1628
1629
1630
1631
1632
1633
1634
1635
1636
1637
1638
1639
1640
1641
1642
1643
1644
1645
1646
1647
1648
1649
1650
1651
1652
1653
1654
1655
1656
1657
1658
1659
1660
1661
1662
1663
1664
1665
1666
1667
1668
1669
1670
1671
1672
1673
1674
1675
1676
1677
1678
1679
1680
1681
1682
1683
1684
1685
1686
1687
1688
1689
1690
1691
1692
1693
1694
1695
1696
1697
1698
1699
1700
1701
1702
1703
1704
1705
1706
1707
1708
1709
1710
1711
1712
1713
1714
1715
1716
1717
1718
1719
1720
1721
1722
1723
1724
1725
1726
1727
1728
1729
1730
1731
1732
1733
1734
1735
1736
1737
1738
1739
1740
1741
1742
1743
1744
1745
1746
1747
1748
1749
1750
1751
1752
1753
1754
1755
1756
1757
1758
1759
1760
1761
1762
1763
1764
1765
1766
1767
1768
1769
1770
1771
1772
1773
1774
1775
1776
1777
1778
1779
1780
1781
1782
1783
1784
1785
1786
1787
1788
1789
1790
1791
1792
1793
1794
1795
1796
1797
1798
1799
1800
1801
1802
1803
1804
1805
1806
1807
1808
1809
1810
1811
1812
1813
1814
1815
1816
1817
1818
1819
1820
1821
1822
1823
1824
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
1832
1833
1834
1835
1836
1837
1838
1839
1840
1841
1842
1843
1844
1845
1846
1847
1848
1849
1850
1851
1852
1853
1854
1855
1856
1857
1858
1859
1860
1861
1862
1863
1864
1865
1866
1867
1868
1869
1870
1871
1872
1873
1874
1875
1876
1877
1878
1879
1880
1881
1882
1883
1884
1885
1886
1887
1888
1889
1890
1891
1892
1893
1894
1895
1896
1897
1898
1899
1900
1901
1902
1903
1904
1905
1906
1907
1908
1909
1910
1911
1912
1913
1914
1915
1916
1917
1918
1919
1920
1921
1922
1923
1924
1925
1926
1927
1928
1929
1930
1931
1932
1933
1934
1935
1936
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
|
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<title>CommandLine 2.0 Library Manual</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="llvm.css" type="text/css">
</head>
<body>
<h1>
CommandLine 2.0 Library Manual
</h1>
<ol>
<li><a href="#introduction">Introduction</a></li>
<li><a href="#quickstart">Quick Start Guide</a>
<ol>
<li><a href="#bool">Boolean Arguments</a></li>
<li><a href="#alias">Argument Aliases</a></li>
<li><a href="#onealternative">Selecting an alternative from a
set of possibilities</a></li>
<li><a href="#namedalternatives">Named alternatives</a></li>
<li><a href="#list">Parsing a list of options</a></li>
<li><a href="#bits">Collecting options as a set of flags</a></li>
<li><a href="#description">Adding freeform text to help output</a></li>
</ol></li>
<li><a href="#referenceguide">Reference Guide</a>
<ol>
<li><a href="#positional">Positional Arguments</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#--">Specifying positional options with hyphens</a></li>
<li><a href="#getPosition">Determining absolute position with
getPosition</a></li>
<li><a href="#cl::ConsumeAfter">The <tt>cl::ConsumeAfter</tt>
modifier</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#storage">Internal vs External Storage</a></li>
<li><a href="#attributes">Option Attributes</a></li>
<li><a href="#modifiers">Option Modifiers</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#hiding">Hiding an option from <tt>-help</tt>
output</a></li>
<li><a href="#numoccurrences">Controlling the number of occurrences
required and allowed</a></li>
<li><a href="#valrequired">Controlling whether or not a value must be
specified</a></li>
<li><a href="#formatting">Controlling other formatting options</a></li>
<li><a href="#misc">Miscellaneous option modifiers</a></li>
<li><a href="#response">Response files</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#toplevel">Top-Level Classes and Functions</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#cl::ParseCommandLineOptions">The
<tt>cl::ParseCommandLineOptions</tt> function</a></li>
<li><a href="#cl::ParseEnvironmentOptions">The
<tt>cl::ParseEnvironmentOptions</tt> function</a></li>
<li><a href="#cl::SetVersionPrinter">The <tt>cl::SetVersionPrinter</tt>
function</a></li>
<li><a href="#cl::opt">The <tt>cl::opt</tt> class</a></li>
<li><a href="#cl::list">The <tt>cl::list</tt> class</a></li>
<li><a href="#cl::bits">The <tt>cl::bits</tt> class</a></li>
<li><a href="#cl::alias">The <tt>cl::alias</tt> class</a></li>
<li><a href="#cl::extrahelp">The <tt>cl::extrahelp</tt> class</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#builtinparsers">Builtin parsers</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#genericparser">The Generic <tt>parser<t></tt>
parser</a></li>
<li><a href="#boolparser">The <tt>parser<bool></tt>
specialization</a></li>
<li><a href="#boolOrDefaultparser">The <tt>parser<boolOrDefault></tt>
specialization</a></li>
<li><a href="#stringparser">The <tt>parser<string></tt>
specialization</a></li>
<li><a href="#intparser">The <tt>parser<int></tt>
specialization</a></li>
<li><a href="#doubleparser">The <tt>parser<double></tt> and
<tt>parser<float></tt> specializations</a></li>
</ul></li>
</ol></li>
<li><a href="#extensionguide">Extension Guide</a>
<ol>
<li><a href="#customparser">Writing a custom parser</a></li>
<li><a href="#explotingexternal">Exploiting external storage</a></li>
<li><a href="#dynamicopts">Dynamically adding command line
options</a></li>
</ol></li>
</ol>
<div class="doc_author">
<p>Written by <a href="mailto:sabre@nondot.org">Chris Lattner</a></p>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<h2>
<a name="introduction">Introduction</a>
</h2>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
<p>This document describes the CommandLine argument processing library. It will
show you how to use it, and what it can do. The CommandLine library uses a
declarative approach to specifying the command line options that your program
takes. By default, these options declarations implicitly hold the value parsed
for the option declared (of course this <a href="#storage">can be
changed</a>).</p>
<p>Although there are a <b>lot</b> of command line argument parsing libraries
out there in many different languages, none of them fit well with what I needed.
By looking at the features and problems of other libraries, I designed the
CommandLine library to have the following features:</p>
<ol>
<li>Speed: The CommandLine library is very quick and uses little resources. The
parsing time of the library is directly proportional to the number of arguments
parsed, not the the number of options recognized. Additionally, command line
argument values are captured transparently into user defined global variables,
which can be accessed like any other variable (and with the same
performance).</li>
<li>Type Safe: As a user of CommandLine, you don't have to worry about
remembering the type of arguments that you want (is it an int? a string? a
bool? an enum?) and keep casting it around. Not only does this help prevent
error prone constructs, it also leads to dramatically cleaner source code.</li>
<li>No subclasses required: To use CommandLine, you instantiate variables that
correspond to the arguments that you would like to capture, you don't subclass a
parser. This means that you don't have to write <b>any</b> boilerplate
code.</li>
<li>Globally accessible: Libraries can specify command line arguments that are
automatically enabled in any tool that links to the library. This is possible
because the application doesn't have to keep a list of arguments to pass to
the parser. This also makes supporting <a href="#dynamicopts">dynamically
loaded options</a> trivial.</li>
<li>Cleaner: CommandLine supports enum and other types directly, meaning that
there is less error and more security built into the library. You don't have to
worry about whether your integral command line argument accidentally got
assigned a value that is not valid for your enum type.</li>
<li>Powerful: The CommandLine library supports many different types of
arguments, from simple <a href="#boolparser">boolean flags</a> to <a
href="#cl::opt">scalars arguments</a> (<a href="#stringparser">strings</a>, <a
href="#intparser">integers</a>, <a href="#genericparser">enums</a>, <a
href="#doubleparser">doubles</a>), to <a href="#cl::list">lists of
arguments</a>. This is possible because CommandLine is...</li>
<li>Extensible: It is very simple to add a new argument type to CommandLine.
Simply specify the parser that you want to use with the command line option when
you declare it. <a href="#customparser">Custom parsers</a> are no problem.</li>
<li>Labor Saving: The CommandLine library cuts down on the amount of grunt work
that you, the user, have to do. For example, it automatically provides a
<tt>-help</tt> option that shows the available command line options for your
tool. Additionally, it does most of the basic correctness checking for
you.</li>
<li>Capable: The CommandLine library can handle lots of different forms of
options often found in real programs. For example, <a
href="#positional">positional</a> arguments, <tt>ls</tt> style <a
href="#cl::Grouping">grouping</a> options (to allow processing '<tt>ls
-lad</tt>' naturally), <tt>ld</tt> style <a href="#cl::Prefix">prefix</a>
options (to parse '<tt>-lmalloc -L/usr/lib</tt>'), and <a
href="#cl::ConsumeAfter">interpreter style options</a>.</li>
</ol>
<p>This document will hopefully let you jump in and start using CommandLine in
your utility quickly and painlessly. Additionally it should be a simple
reference manual to figure out how stuff works. If it is failing in some area
(or you want an extension to the library), nag the author, <a
href="mailto:sabre@nondot.org">Chris Lattner</a>.</p>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<h2>
<a name="quickstart">Quick Start Guide</a>
</h2>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
<p>This section of the manual runs through a simple CommandLine'ification of a
basic compiler tool. This is intended to show you how to jump into using the
CommandLine library in your own program, and show you some of the cool things it
can do.</p>
<p>To start out, you need to include the CommandLine header file into your
program:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
#include "llvm/Support/CommandLine.h"
</pre></div>
<p>Additionally, you need to add this as the first line of your main
program:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
<a href="#cl::ParseCommandLineOptions">cl::ParseCommandLineOptions</a>(argc, argv);
...
}
</pre></div>
<p>... which actually parses the arguments and fills in the variable
declarations.</p>
<p>Now that you are ready to support command line arguments, we need to tell the
system which ones we want, and what type of arguments they are. The CommandLine
library uses a declarative syntax to model command line arguments with the
global variable declarations that capture the parsed values. This means that
for every command line option that you would like to support, there should be a
global variable declaration to capture the result. For example, in a compiler,
we would like to support the Unix-standard '<tt>-o <filename></tt>' option
to specify where to put the output. With the CommandLine library, this is
represented like this:</p>
<a name="value_desc_example"></a>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
<a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a><string> OutputFilename("<i>o</i>", <a href="#cl::desc">cl::desc</a>("<i>Specify output filename</i>"), <a href="#cl::value_desc">cl::value_desc</a>("<i>filename</i>"));
</pre></div>
<p>This declares a global variable "<tt>OutputFilename</tt>" that is used to
capture the result of the "<tt>o</tt>" argument (first parameter). We specify
that this is a simple scalar option by using the "<tt><a
href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a></tt>" template (as opposed to the <a
href="#list">"<tt>cl::list</tt> template</a>), and tell the CommandLine library
that the data type that we are parsing is a string.</p>
<p>The second and third parameters (which are optional) are used to specify what
to output for the "<tt>-help</tt>" option. In this case, we get a line that
looks like this:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
USAGE: compiler [options]
OPTIONS:
-help - display available options (-help-hidden for more)
<b>-o <filename> - Specify output filename</b>
</pre></div>
<p>Because we specified that the command line option should parse using the
<tt>string</tt> data type, the variable declared is automatically usable as a
real string in all contexts that a normal C++ string object may be used. For
example:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
...
std::ofstream Output(OutputFilename.c_str());
if (Output.good()) ...
...
</pre></div>
<p>There are many different options that you can use to customize the command
line option handling library, but the above example shows the general interface
to these options. The options can be specified in any order, and are specified
with helper functions like <a href="#cl::desc"><tt>cl::desc(...)</tt></a>, so
there are no positional dependencies to remember. The available options are
discussed in detail in the <a href="#referenceguide">Reference Guide</a>.</p>
<p>Continuing the example, we would like to have our compiler take an input
filename as well as an output filename, but we do not want the input filename to
be specified with a hyphen (ie, not <tt>-filename.c</tt>). To support this
style of argument, the CommandLine library allows for <a
href="#positional">positional</a> arguments to be specified for the program.
These positional arguments are filled with command line parameters that are not
in option form. We use this feature like this:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
<a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a><string> InputFilename(<a href="#cl::Positional">cl::Positional</a>, <a href="#cl::desc">cl::desc</a>("<i><input file></i>"), <a href="#cl::init">cl::init</a>("<i>-</i>"));
</pre></div>
<p>This declaration indicates that the first positional argument should be
treated as the input filename. Here we use the <tt><a
href="#cl::init">cl::init</a></tt> option to specify an initial value for the
command line option, which is used if the option is not specified (if you do not
specify a <tt><a href="#cl::init">cl::init</a></tt> modifier for an option, then
the default constructor for the data type is used to initialize the value).
Command line options default to being optional, so if we would like to require
that the user always specify an input filename, we would add the <tt><a
href="#cl::Required">cl::Required</a></tt> flag, and we could eliminate the
<tt><a href="#cl::init">cl::init</a></tt> modifier, like this:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
<a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a><string> InputFilename(<a href="#cl::Positional">cl::Positional</a>, <a href="#cl::desc">cl::desc</a>("<i><input file></i>"), <b><a href="#cl::Required">cl::Required</a></b>);
</pre></div>
<p>Again, the CommandLine library does not require the options to be specified
in any particular order, so the above declaration is equivalent to:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
<a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a><string> InputFilename(<a href="#cl::Positional">cl::Positional</a>, <a href="#cl::Required">cl::Required</a>, <a href="#cl::desc">cl::desc</a>("<i><input file></i>"));
</pre></div>
<p>By simply adding the <tt><a href="#cl::Required">cl::Required</a></tt> flag,
the CommandLine library will automatically issue an error if the argument is not
specified, which shifts all of the command line option verification code out of
your application into the library. This is just one example of how using flags
can alter the default behaviour of the library, on a per-option basis. By
adding one of the declarations above, the <tt>-help</tt> option synopsis is now
extended to:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
USAGE: compiler [options] <b><input file></b>
OPTIONS:
-help - display available options (-help-hidden for more)
-o <filename> - Specify output filename
</pre></div>
<p>... indicating that an input filename is expected.</p>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<h3>
<a name="bool">Boolean Arguments</a>
</h3>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>In addition to input and output filenames, we would like the compiler example
to support three boolean flags: "<tt>-f</tt>" to force writing binary output to
a terminal, "<tt>--quiet</tt>" to enable quiet mode, and "<tt>-q</tt>" for
backwards compatibility with some of our users. We can support these by
declaring options of boolean type like this:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
<a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a><bool> Force ("<i>f</i>", <a href="#cl::desc">cl::desc</a>("<i>Enable binary output on terminals</i>"));
<a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a><bool> Quiet ("<i>quiet</i>", <a href="#cl::desc">cl::desc</a>("<i>Don't print informational messages</i>"));
<a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a><bool> Quiet2("<i>q</i>", <a href="#cl::desc">cl::desc</a>("<i>Don't print informational messages</i>"), <a href="#cl::Hidden">cl::Hidden</a>);
</pre></div>
<p>This does what you would expect: it declares three boolean variables
("<tt>Force</tt>", "<tt>Quiet</tt>", and "<tt>Quiet2</tt>") to recognize these
options. Note that the "<tt>-q</tt>" option is specified with the "<a
href="#cl::Hidden"><tt>cl::Hidden</tt></a>" flag. This modifier prevents it
from being shown by the standard "<tt>-help</tt>" output (note that it is still
shown in the "<tt>-help-hidden</tt>" output).</p>
<p>The CommandLine library uses a <a href="#builtinparsers">different parser</a>
for different data types. For example, in the string case, the argument passed
to the option is copied literally into the content of the string variable... we
obviously cannot do that in the boolean case, however, so we must use a smarter
parser. In the case of the boolean parser, it allows no options (in which case
it assigns the value of true to the variable), or it allows the values
"<tt>true</tt>" or "<tt>false</tt>" to be specified, allowing any of the
following inputs:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
compiler -f # No value, 'Force' == true
compiler -f=true # Value specified, 'Force' == true
compiler -f=TRUE # Value specified, 'Force' == true
compiler -f=FALSE # Value specified, 'Force' == false
</pre></div>
<p>... you get the idea. The <a href="#boolparser">bool parser</a> just turns
the string values into boolean values, and rejects things like '<tt>compiler
-f=foo</tt>'. Similarly, the <a href="#doubleparser">float</a>, <a
href="#doubleparser">double</a>, and <a href="#intparser">int</a> parsers work
like you would expect, using the '<tt>strtol</tt>' and '<tt>strtod</tt>' C
library calls to parse the string value into the specified data type.</p>
<p>With the declarations above, "<tt>compiler -help</tt>" emits this:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
USAGE: compiler [options] <input file>
OPTIONS:
<b>-f - Enable binary output on terminals</b>
-o - Override output filename
<b>-quiet - Don't print informational messages</b>
-help - display available options (-help-hidden for more)
</pre></div>
<p>and "<tt>compiler -help-hidden</tt>" prints this:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
USAGE: compiler [options] <input file>
OPTIONS:
-f - Enable binary output on terminals
-o - Override output filename
<b>-q - Don't print informational messages</b>
-quiet - Don't print informational messages
-help - display available options (-help-hidden for more)
</pre></div>
<p>This brief example has shown you how to use the '<tt><a
href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a></tt>' class to parse simple scalar command line
arguments. In addition to simple scalar arguments, the CommandLine library also
provides primitives to support CommandLine option <a href="#alias">aliases</a>,
and <a href="#list">lists</a> of options.</p>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<h3>
<a name="alias">Argument Aliases</a>
</h3>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>So far, the example works well, except for the fact that we need to check the
quiet condition like this now:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
...
if (!Quiet && !Quiet2) printInformationalMessage(...);
...
</pre></div>
<p>... which is a real pain! Instead of defining two values for the same
condition, we can use the "<tt><a href="#cl::alias">cl::alias</a></tt>" class to make the "<tt>-q</tt>"
option an <b>alias</b> for the "<tt>-quiet</tt>" option, instead of providing
a value itself:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
<a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a><bool> Force ("<i>f</i>", <a href="#cl::desc">cl::desc</a>("<i>Overwrite output files</i>"));
<a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a><bool> Quiet ("<i>quiet</i>", <a href="#cl::desc">cl::desc</a>("<i>Don't print informational messages</i>"));
<a href="#cl::alias">cl::alias</a> QuietA("<i>q</i>", <a href="#cl::desc">cl::desc</a>("<i>Alias for -quiet</i>"), <a href="#cl::aliasopt">cl::aliasopt</a>(Quiet));
</pre></div>
<p>The third line (which is the only one we modified from above) defines a
"<tt>-q</tt>" alias that updates the "<tt>Quiet</tt>" variable (as specified by
the <tt><a href="#cl::aliasopt">cl::aliasopt</a></tt> modifier) whenever it is
specified. Because aliases do not hold state, the only thing the program has to
query is the <tt>Quiet</tt> variable now. Another nice feature of aliases is
that they automatically hide themselves from the <tt>-help</tt> output
(although, again, they are still visible in the <tt>-help-hidden
output</tt>).</p>
<p>Now the application code can simply use:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
...
if (!Quiet) printInformationalMessage(...);
...
</pre></div>
<p>... which is much nicer! The "<tt><a href="#cl::alias">cl::alias</a></tt>"
can be used to specify an alternative name for any variable type, and has many
uses.</p>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<h3>
<a name="onealternative">Selecting an alternative from a set of
possibilities</a>
</h3>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>So far we have seen how the CommandLine library handles builtin types like
<tt>std::string</tt>, <tt>bool</tt> and <tt>int</tt>, but how does it handle
things it doesn't know about, like enums or '<tt>int*</tt>'s?</p>
<p>The answer is that it uses a table-driven generic parser (unless you specify
your own parser, as described in the <a href="#extensionguide">Extension
Guide</a>). This parser maps literal strings to whatever type is required, and
requires you to tell it what this mapping should be.</p>
<p>Let's say that we would like to add four optimization levels to our
optimizer, using the standard flags "<tt>-g</tt>", "<tt>-O0</tt>",
"<tt>-O1</tt>", and "<tt>-O2</tt>". We could easily implement this with boolean
options like above, but there are several problems with this strategy:</p>
<ol>
<li>A user could specify more than one of the options at a time, for example,
"<tt>compiler -O3 -O2</tt>". The CommandLine library would not be able to
catch this erroneous input for us.</li>
<li>We would have to test 4 different variables to see which ones are set.</li>
<li>This doesn't map to the numeric levels that we want... so we cannot easily
see if some level >= "<tt>-O1</tt>" is enabled.</li>
</ol>
<p>To cope with these problems, we can use an enum value, and have the
CommandLine library fill it in with the appropriate level directly, which is
used like this:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
enum OptLevel {
g, O1, O2, O3
};
<a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a><OptLevel> OptimizationLevel(<a href="#cl::desc">cl::desc</a>("<i>Choose optimization level:</i>"),
<a href="#cl::values">cl::values</a>(
clEnumVal(g , "<i>No optimizations, enable debugging</i>"),
clEnumVal(O1, "<i>Enable trivial optimizations</i>"),
clEnumVal(O2, "<i>Enable default optimizations</i>"),
clEnumVal(O3, "<i>Enable expensive optimizations</i>"),
clEnumValEnd));
...
if (OptimizationLevel >= O2) doPartialRedundancyElimination(...);
...
</pre></div>
<p>This declaration defines a variable "<tt>OptimizationLevel</tt>" of the
"<tt>OptLevel</tt>" enum type. This variable can be assigned any of the values
that are listed in the declaration (Note that the declaration list must be
terminated with the "<tt>clEnumValEnd</tt>" argument!). The CommandLine
library enforces
that the user can only specify one of the options, and it ensure that only valid
enum values can be specified. The "<tt>clEnumVal</tt>" macros ensure that the
command line arguments matched the enum values. With this option added, our
help output now is:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
USAGE: compiler [options] <input file>
OPTIONS:
<b>Choose optimization level:
-g - No optimizations, enable debugging
-O1 - Enable trivial optimizations
-O2 - Enable default optimizations
-O3 - Enable expensive optimizations</b>
-f - Enable binary output on terminals
-help - display available options (-help-hidden for more)
-o <filename> - Specify output filename
-quiet - Don't print informational messages
</pre></div>
<p>In this case, it is sort of awkward that flag names correspond directly to
enum names, because we probably don't want a enum definition named "<tt>g</tt>"
in our program. Because of this, we can alternatively write this example like
this:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
enum OptLevel {
Debug, O1, O2, O3
};
<a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a><OptLevel> OptimizationLevel(<a href="#cl::desc">cl::desc</a>("<i>Choose optimization level:</i>"),
<a href="#cl::values">cl::values</a>(
clEnumValN(Debug, "g", "<i>No optimizations, enable debugging</i>"),
clEnumVal(O1 , "<i>Enable trivial optimizations</i>"),
clEnumVal(O2 , "<i>Enable default optimizations</i>"),
clEnumVal(O3 , "<i>Enable expensive optimizations</i>"),
clEnumValEnd));
...
if (OptimizationLevel == Debug) outputDebugInfo(...);
...
</pre></div>
<p>By using the "<tt>clEnumValN</tt>" macro instead of "<tt>clEnumVal</tt>", we
can directly specify the name that the flag should get. In general a direct
mapping is nice, but sometimes you can't or don't want to preserve the mapping,
which is when you would use it.</p>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<h3>
<a name="namedalternatives">Named Alternatives</a>
</h3>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>Another useful argument form is a named alternative style. We shall use this
style in our compiler to specify different debug levels that can be used.
Instead of each debug level being its own switch, we want to support the
following options, of which only one can be specified at a time:
"<tt>--debug-level=none</tt>", "<tt>--debug-level=quick</tt>",
"<tt>--debug-level=detailed</tt>". To do this, we use the exact same format as
our optimization level flags, but we also specify an option name. For this
case, the code looks like this:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
enum DebugLev {
nodebuginfo, quick, detailed
};
// Enable Debug Options to be specified on the command line
<a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a><DebugLev> DebugLevel("<i>debug_level</i>", <a href="#cl::desc">cl::desc</a>("<i>Set the debugging level:</i>"),
<a href="#cl::values">cl::values</a>(
clEnumValN(nodebuginfo, "none", "<i>disable debug information</i>"),
clEnumVal(quick, "<i>enable quick debug information</i>"),
clEnumVal(detailed, "<i>enable detailed debug information</i>"),
clEnumValEnd));
</pre></div>
<p>This definition defines an enumerated command line variable of type "<tt>enum
DebugLev</tt>", which works exactly the same way as before. The difference here
is just the interface exposed to the user of your program and the help output by
the "<tt>-help</tt>" option:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
USAGE: compiler [options] <input file>
OPTIONS:
Choose optimization level:
-g - No optimizations, enable debugging
-O1 - Enable trivial optimizations
-O2 - Enable default optimizations
-O3 - Enable expensive optimizations
<b>-debug_level - Set the debugging level:
=none - disable debug information
=quick - enable quick debug information
=detailed - enable detailed debug information</b>
-f - Enable binary output on terminals
-help - display available options (-help-hidden for more)
-o <filename> - Specify output filename
-quiet - Don't print informational messages
</pre></div>
<p>Again, the only structural difference between the debug level declaration and
the optimization level declaration is that the debug level declaration includes
an option name (<tt>"debug_level"</tt>), which automatically changes how the
library processes the argument. The CommandLine library supports both forms so
that you can choose the form most appropriate for your application.</p>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<h3>
<a name="list">Parsing a list of options</a>
</h3>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>Now that we have the standard run-of-the-mill argument types out of the way,
lets get a little wild and crazy. Lets say that we want our optimizer to accept
a <b>list</b> of optimizations to perform, allowing duplicates. For example, we
might want to run: "<tt>compiler -dce -constprop -inline -dce -strip</tt>". In
this case, the order of the arguments and the number of appearances is very
important. This is what the "<tt><a href="#cl::list">cl::list</a></tt>"
template is for. First, start by defining an enum of the optimizations that you
would like to perform:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
enum Opts {
// 'inline' is a C++ keyword, so name it 'inlining'
dce, constprop, inlining, strip
};
</pre></div>
<p>Then define your "<tt><a href="#cl::list">cl::list</a></tt>" variable:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
<a href="#cl::list">cl::list</a><Opts> OptimizationList(<a href="#cl::desc">cl::desc</a>("<i>Available Optimizations:</i>"),
<a href="#cl::values">cl::values</a>(
clEnumVal(dce , "<i>Dead Code Elimination</i>"),
clEnumVal(constprop , "<i>Constant Propagation</i>"),
clEnumValN(inlining, "<i>inline</i>", "<i>Procedure Integration</i>"),
clEnumVal(strip , "<i>Strip Symbols</i>"),
clEnumValEnd));
</pre></div>
<p>This defines a variable that is conceptually of the type
"<tt>std::vector<enum Opts></tt>". Thus, you can access it with standard
vector methods:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
for (unsigned i = 0; i != OptimizationList.size(); ++i)
switch (OptimizationList[i])
...
</pre></div>
<p>... to iterate through the list of options specified.</p>
<p>Note that the "<tt><a href="#cl::list">cl::list</a></tt>" template is
completely general and may be used with any data types or other arguments that
you can use with the "<tt><a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a></tt>" template. One
especially useful way to use a list is to capture all of the positional
arguments together if there may be more than one specified. In the case of a
linker, for example, the linker takes several '<tt>.o</tt>' files, and needs to
capture them into a list. This is naturally specified as:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
...
<a href="#cl::list">cl::list</a><std::string> InputFilenames(<a href="#cl::Positional">cl::Positional</a>, <a href="#cl::desc">cl::desc</a>("<Input files>"), <a href="#cl::OneOrMore">cl::OneOrMore</a>);
...
</pre></div>
<p>This variable works just like a "<tt>vector<string></tt>" object. As
such, accessing the list is simple, just like above. In this example, we used
the <tt><a href="#cl::OneOrMore">cl::OneOrMore</a></tt> modifier to inform the
CommandLine library that it is an error if the user does not specify any
<tt>.o</tt> files on our command line. Again, this just reduces the amount of
checking we have to do.</p>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<h3>
<a name="bits">Collecting options as a set of flags</a>
</h3>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>Instead of collecting sets of options in a list, it is also possible to
gather information for enum values in a <b>bit vector</b>. The representation used by
the <a href="#bits"><tt>cl::bits</tt></a> class is an <tt>unsigned</tt>
integer. An enum value is represented by a 0/1 in the enum's ordinal value bit
position. 1 indicating that the enum was specified, 0 otherwise. As each
specified value is parsed, the resulting enum's bit is set in the option's bit
vector:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
<i>bits</i> |= 1 << (unsigned)<i>enum</i>;
</pre></div>
<p>Options that are specified multiple times are redundant. Any instances after
the first are discarded.</p>
<p>Reworking the above list example, we could replace <a href="#list">
<tt>cl::list</tt></a> with <a href="#bits"><tt>cl::bits</tt></a>:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
<a href="#cl::bits">cl::bits</a><Opts> OptimizationBits(<a href="#cl::desc">cl::desc</a>("<i>Available Optimizations:</i>"),
<a href="#cl::values">cl::values</a>(
clEnumVal(dce , "<i>Dead Code Elimination</i>"),
clEnumVal(constprop , "<i>Constant Propagation</i>"),
clEnumValN(inlining, "<i>inline</i>", "<i>Procedure Integration</i>"),
clEnumVal(strip , "<i>Strip Symbols</i>"),
clEnumValEnd));
</pre></div>
<p>To test to see if <tt>constprop</tt> was specified, we can use the
<tt>cl:bits::isSet</tt> function:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
if (OptimizationBits.isSet(constprop)) {
...
}
</pre></div>
<p>It's also possible to get the raw bit vector using the
<tt>cl::bits::getBits</tt> function:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
unsigned bits = OptimizationBits.getBits();
</pre></div>
<p>Finally, if external storage is used, then the location specified must be of
<b>type</b> <tt>unsigned</tt>. In all other ways a <a
href="#bits"><tt>cl::bits</tt></a> option is equivalent to a <a
href="#list"> <tt>cl::list</tt></a> option.</p>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<h3>
<a name="description">Adding freeform text to help output</a>
</h3>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>As our program grows and becomes more mature, we may decide to put summary
information about what it does into the help output. The help output is styled
to look similar to a Unix <tt>man</tt> page, providing concise information about
a program. Unix <tt>man</tt> pages, however often have a description about what
the program does. To add this to your CommandLine program, simply pass a third
argument to the <a
href="#cl::ParseCommandLineOptions"><tt>cl::ParseCommandLineOptions</tt></a>
call in main. This additional argument is then printed as the overview
information for your program, allowing you to include any additional information
that you want. For example:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
<a href="#cl::ParseCommandLineOptions">cl::ParseCommandLineOptions</a>(argc, argv, " CommandLine compiler example\n\n"
" This program blah blah blah...\n");
...
}
</pre></div>
<p>would yield the help output:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
<b>OVERVIEW: CommandLine compiler example
This program blah blah blah...</b>
USAGE: compiler [options] <input file>
OPTIONS:
...
-help - display available options (-help-hidden for more)
-o <filename> - Specify output filename
</pre></div>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<h2>
<a name="referenceguide">Reference Guide</a>
</h2>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
<p>Now that you know the basics of how to use the CommandLine library, this
section will give you the detailed information you need to tune how command line
options work, as well as information on more "advanced" command line option
processing capabilities.</p>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<h3>
<a name="positional">Positional Arguments</a>
</h3>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>Positional arguments are those arguments that are not named, and are not
specified with a hyphen. Positional arguments should be used when an option is
specified by its position alone. For example, the standard Unix <tt>grep</tt>
tool takes a regular expression argument, and an optional filename to search
through (which defaults to standard input if a filename is not specified).
Using the CommandLine library, this would be specified as:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
<a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a><string> Regex (<a href="#cl::Positional">cl::Positional</a>, <a href="#cl::desc">cl::desc</a>("<i><regular expression></i>"), <a href="#cl::Required">cl::Required</a>);
<a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a><string> Filename(<a href="#cl::Positional">cl::Positional</a>, <a href="#cl::desc">cl::desc</a>("<i><input file></i>"), <a href="#cl::init">cl::init</a>("<i>-</i>"));
</pre></div>
<p>Given these two option declarations, the <tt>-help</tt> output for our grep
replacement would look like this:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
USAGE: spiffygrep [options] <b><regular expression> <input file></b>
OPTIONS:
-help - display available options (-help-hidden for more)
</pre></div>
<p>... and the resultant program could be used just like the standard
<tt>grep</tt> tool.</p>
<p>Positional arguments are sorted by their order of construction. This means
that command line options will be ordered according to how they are listed in a
.cpp file, but will not have an ordering defined if the positional arguments
are defined in multiple .cpp files. The fix for this problem is simply to
define all of your positional arguments in one .cpp file.</p>
</div>
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
<h4>
<a name="--">Specifying positional options with hyphens</a>
</h4>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>Sometimes you may want to specify a value to your positional argument that
starts with a hyphen (for example, searching for '<tt>-foo</tt>' in a file). At
first, you will have trouble doing this, because it will try to find an argument
named '<tt>-foo</tt>', and will fail (and single quotes will not save you).
Note that the system <tt>grep</tt> has the same problem:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
$ spiffygrep '-foo' test.txt
Unknown command line argument '-foo'. Try: spiffygrep -help'
$ grep '-foo' test.txt
grep: illegal option -- f
grep: illegal option -- o
grep: illegal option -- o
Usage: grep -hblcnsviw pattern file . . .
</pre></div>
<p>The solution for this problem is the same for both your tool and the system
version: use the '<tt>--</tt>' marker. When the user specifies '<tt>--</tt>' on
the command line, it is telling the program that all options after the
'<tt>--</tt>' should be treated as positional arguments, not options. Thus, we
can use it like this:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
$ spiffygrep -- -foo test.txt
...output...
</pre></div>
</div>
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
<h4>
<a name="getPosition">Determining absolute position with getPosition()</a>
</h4>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>Sometimes an option can affect or modify the meaning of another option. For
example, consider <tt>gcc</tt>'s <tt>-x LANG</tt> option. This tells
<tt>gcc</tt> to ignore the suffix of subsequent positional arguments and force
the file to be interpreted as if it contained source code in language
<tt>LANG</tt>. In order to handle this properly, you need to know the
absolute position of each argument, especially those in lists, so their
interaction(s) can be applied correctly. This is also useful for options like
<tt>-llibname</tt> which is actually a positional argument that starts with
a dash.</p>
<p>So, generally, the problem is that you have two <tt>cl::list</tt> variables
that interact in some way. To ensure the correct interaction, you can use the
<tt>cl::list::getPosition(optnum)</tt> method. This method returns the
absolute position (as found on the command line) of the <tt>optnum</tt>
item in the <tt>cl::list</tt>.</p>
<p>The idiom for usage is like this:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
static cl::list<std::string> Files(cl::Positional, cl::OneOrMore);
static cl::list<std::string> Libraries("l", cl::ZeroOrMore);
int main(int argc, char**argv) {
// ...
std::vector<std::string>::iterator fileIt = Files.begin();
std::vector<std::string>::iterator libIt = Libraries.begin();
unsigned libPos = 0, filePos = 0;
while ( 1 ) {
if ( libIt != Libraries.end() )
libPos = Libraries.getPosition( libIt - Libraries.begin() );
else
libPos = 0;
if ( fileIt != Files.end() )
filePos = Files.getPosition( fileIt - Files.begin() );
else
filePos = 0;
if ( filePos != 0 && (libPos == 0 || filePos < libPos) ) {
// Source File Is next
++fileIt;
}
else if ( libPos != 0 && (filePos == 0 || libPos < filePos) ) {
// Library is next
++libIt;
}
else
break; // we're done with the list
}
}</pre></div>
<p>Note that, for compatibility reasons, the <tt>cl::opt</tt> also supports an
<tt>unsigned getPosition()</tt> option that will provide the absolute position
of that option. You can apply the same approach as above with a
<tt>cl::opt</tt> and a <tt>cl::list</tt> option as you can with two lists.</p>
</div>
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
<h4>
<a name="cl::ConsumeAfter">The <tt>cl::ConsumeAfter</tt> modifier</a>
</h4>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>The <tt>cl::ConsumeAfter</tt> <a href="#formatting">formatting option</a> is
used to construct programs that use "interpreter style" option processing. With
this style of option processing, all arguments specified after the last
positional argument are treated as special interpreter arguments that are not
interpreted by the command line argument.</p>
<p>As a concrete example, lets say we are developing a replacement for the
standard Unix Bourne shell (<tt>/bin/sh</tt>). To run <tt>/bin/sh</tt>, first
you specify options to the shell itself (like <tt>-x</tt> which turns on trace
output), then you specify the name of the script to run, then you specify
arguments to the script. These arguments to the script are parsed by the Bourne
shell command line option processor, but are not interpreted as options to the
shell itself. Using the CommandLine library, we would specify this as:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
<a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a><string> Script(<a href="#cl::Positional">cl::Positional</a>, <a href="#cl::desc">cl::desc</a>("<i><input script></i>"), <a href="#cl::init">cl::init</a>("-"));
<a href="#cl::list">cl::list</a><string> Argv(<a href="#cl::ConsumeAfter">cl::ConsumeAfter</a>, <a href="#cl::desc">cl::desc</a>("<i><program arguments>...</i>"));
<a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a><bool> Trace("<i>x</i>", <a href="#cl::desc">cl::desc</a>("<i>Enable trace output</i>"));
</pre></div>
<p>which automatically provides the help output:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
USAGE: spiffysh [options] <b><input script> <program arguments>...</b>
OPTIONS:
-help - display available options (-help-hidden for more)
<b>-x - Enable trace output</b>
</pre></div>
<p>At runtime, if we run our new shell replacement as `<tt>spiffysh -x test.sh
-a -x -y bar</tt>', the <tt>Trace</tt> variable will be set to true, the
<tt>Script</tt> variable will be set to "<tt>test.sh</tt>", and the
<tt>Argv</tt> list will contain <tt>["-a", "-x", "-y", "bar"]</tt>, because they
were specified after the last positional argument (which is the script
name).</p>
<p>There are several limitations to when <tt>cl::ConsumeAfter</tt> options can
be specified. For example, only one <tt>cl::ConsumeAfter</tt> can be specified
per program, there must be at least one <a href="#positional">positional
argument</a> specified, there must not be any <a href="#cl::list">cl::list</a>
positional arguments, and the <tt>cl::ConsumeAfter</tt> option should be a <a
href="#cl::list">cl::list</a> option.</p>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<h3>
<a name="storage">Internal vs External Storage</a>
</h3>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>By default, all command line options automatically hold the value that they
parse from the command line. This is very convenient in the common case,
especially when combined with the ability to define command line options in the
files that use them. This is called the internal storage model.</p>
<p>Sometimes, however, it is nice to separate the command line option processing
code from the storage of the value parsed. For example, lets say that we have a
'<tt>-debug</tt>' option that we would like to use to enable debug information
across the entire body of our program. In this case, the boolean value
controlling the debug code should be globally accessible (in a header file, for
example) yet the command line option processing code should not be exposed to
all of these clients (requiring lots of .cpp files to #include
<tt>CommandLine.h</tt>).</p>
<p>To do this, set up your .h file with your option, like this for example:</p>
<div class="doc_code">
<pre>
<i>// DebugFlag.h - Get access to the '-debug' command line option
//
// DebugFlag - This boolean is set to true if the '-debug' command line option
// is specified. This should probably not be referenced directly, instead, use
// the DEBUG macro below.
//</i>
extern bool DebugFlag;
<i>// DEBUG macro - This macro should be used by code to emit debug information.
// In the '-debug' option is specified on the command line, and if this is a
// debug build, then the code specified as the option to the macro will be
// executed. Otherwise it will not be.</i>
<span class="doc_hilite">#ifdef NDEBUG
#define DEBUG(X)
#else
#define DEBUG(X)</span> do { if (DebugFlag) { X; } } while (0)
<span class="doc_hilite">#endif</span>
</pre>
</div>
<p>This allows clients to blissfully use the <tt>DEBUG()</tt> macro, or the
<tt>DebugFlag</tt> explicitly if they want to. Now we just need to be able to
set the <tt>DebugFlag</tt> boolean when the option is set. To do this, we pass
an additional argument to our command line argument processor, and we specify
where to fill in with the <a href="#cl::location">cl::location</a>
attribute:</p>
<div class="doc_code">
<pre>
bool DebugFlag; <i>// the actual value</i>
static <a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a><bool, true> <i>// The parser</i>
Debug("<i>debug</i>", <a href="#cl::desc">cl::desc</a>("<i>Enable debug output</i>"), <a href="#cl::Hidden">cl::Hidden</a>, <a href="#cl::location">cl::location</a>(DebugFlag));
</pre>
</div>
<p>In the above example, we specify "<tt>true</tt>" as the second argument to
the <tt><a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a></tt> template, indicating that the
template should not maintain a copy of the value itself. In addition to this,
we specify the <tt><a href="#cl::location">cl::location</a></tt> attribute, so
that <tt>DebugFlag</tt> is automatically set.</p>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<h3>
<a name="attributes">Option Attributes</a>
</h3>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>This section describes the basic attributes that you can specify on
options.</p>
<ul>
<li>The option name attribute (which is required for all options, except <a
href="#positional">positional options</a>) specifies what the option name is.
This option is specified in simple double quotes:
<pre>
<a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a><<b>bool</b>> Quiet("<i>quiet</i>");
</pre>
</li>
<li><a name="cl::desc">The <b><tt>cl::desc</tt></b></a> attribute specifies a
description for the option to be shown in the <tt>-help</tt> output for the
program.</li>
<li><a name="cl::value_desc">The <b><tt>cl::value_desc</tt></b></a> attribute
specifies a string that can be used to fine tune the <tt>-help</tt> output for
a command line option. Look <a href="#value_desc_example">here</a> for an
example.</li>
<li><a name="cl::init">The <b><tt>cl::init</tt></b></a> attribute specifies an
initial value for a <a href="#cl::opt">scalar</a> option. If this attribute is
not specified then the command line option value defaults to the value created
by the default constructor for the type. <b>Warning</b>: If you specify both
<b><tt>cl::init</tt></b> and <b><tt>cl::location</tt></b> for an option,
you must specify <b><tt>cl::location</tt></b> first, so that when the
command-line parser sees <b><tt>cl::init</tt></b>, it knows where to put the
initial value. (You will get an error at runtime if you don't put them in
the right order.)</li>
<li><a name="cl::location">The <b><tt>cl::location</tt></b></a> attribute where
to store the value for a parsed command line option if using external storage.
See the section on <a href="#storage">Internal vs External Storage</a> for more
information.</li>
<li><a name="cl::aliasopt">The <b><tt>cl::aliasopt</tt></b></a> attribute
specifies which option a <tt><a href="#cl::alias">cl::alias</a></tt> option is
an alias for.</li>
<li><a name="cl::values">The <b><tt>cl::values</tt></b></a> attribute specifies
the string-to-value mapping to be used by the generic parser. It takes a
<b>clEnumValEnd terminated</b> list of (option, value, description) triplets
that
specify the option name, the value mapped to, and the description shown in the
<tt>-help</tt> for the tool. Because the generic parser is used most
frequently with enum values, two macros are often useful:
<ol>
<li><a name="clEnumVal">The <b><tt>clEnumVal</tt></b></a> macro is used as a
nice simple way to specify a triplet for an enum. This macro automatically
makes the option name be the same as the enum name. The first option to the
macro is the enum, the second is the description for the command line
option.</li>
<li><a name="clEnumValN">The <b><tt>clEnumValN</tt></b></a> macro is used to
specify macro options where the option name doesn't equal the enum name. For
this macro, the first argument is the enum value, the second is the flag name,
and the second is the description.</li>
</ol>
You will get a compile time error if you try to use cl::values with a parser
that does not support it.</li>
<li><a name="cl::multi_val">The <b><tt>cl::multi_val</tt></b></a>
attribute specifies that this option takes has multiple values
(example: <tt>-sectalign segname sectname sectvalue</tt>). This
attribute takes one unsigned argument - the number of values for the
option. This attribute is valid only on <tt>cl::list</tt> options (and
will fail with compile error if you try to use it with other option
types). It is allowed to use all of the usual modifiers on
multi-valued options (besides <tt>cl::ValueDisallowed</tt>,
obviously).</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<h3>
<a name="modifiers">Option Modifiers</a>
</h3>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>Option modifiers are the flags and expressions that you pass into the
constructors for <tt><a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a></tt> and <tt><a
href="#cl::list">cl::list</a></tt>. These modifiers give you the ability to
tweak how options are parsed and how <tt>-help</tt> output is generated to fit
your application well.</p>
<p>These options fall into five main categories:</p>
<ol>
<li><a href="#hiding">Hiding an option from <tt>-help</tt> output</a></li>
<li><a href="#numoccurrences">Controlling the number of occurrences
required and allowed</a></li>
<li><a href="#valrequired">Controlling whether or not a value must be
specified</a></li>
<li><a href="#formatting">Controlling other formatting options</a></li>
<li><a href="#misc">Miscellaneous option modifiers</a></li>
</ol>
<p>It is not possible to specify two options from the same category (you'll get
a runtime error) to a single option, except for options in the miscellaneous
category. The CommandLine library specifies defaults for all of these settings
that are the most useful in practice and the most common, which mean that you
usually shouldn't have to worry about these.</p>
</div>
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
<h4>
<a name="hiding">Hiding an option from <tt>-help</tt> output</a>
</h4>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>The <tt>cl::NotHidden</tt>, <tt>cl::Hidden</tt>, and
<tt>cl::ReallyHidden</tt> modifiers are used to control whether or not an option
appears in the <tt>-help</tt> and <tt>-help-hidden</tt> output for the
compiled program:</p>
<ul>
<li><a name="cl::NotHidden">The <b><tt>cl::NotHidden</tt></b></a> modifier
(which is the default for <tt><a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a></tt> and <tt><a
href="#cl::list">cl::list</a></tt> options) indicates the option is to appear
in both help listings.</li>
<li><a name="cl::Hidden">The <b><tt>cl::Hidden</tt></b></a> modifier (which is the
default for <tt><a href="#cl::alias">cl::alias</a></tt> options) indicates that
the option should not appear in the <tt>-help</tt> output, but should appear in
the <tt>-help-hidden</tt> output.</li>
<li><a name="cl::ReallyHidden">The <b><tt>cl::ReallyHidden</tt></b></a> modifier
indicates that the option should not appear in any help output.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
<h4>
<a name="numoccurrences">Controlling the number of occurrences required and
allowed</a>
</h4>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>This group of options is used to control how many time an option is allowed
(or required) to be specified on the command line of your program. Specifying a
value for this setting allows the CommandLine library to do error checking for
you.</p>
<p>The allowed values for this option group are:</p>
<ul>
<li><a name="cl::Optional">The <b><tt>cl::Optional</tt></b></a> modifier (which
is the default for the <tt><a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a></tt> and <tt><a
href="#cl::alias">cl::alias</a></tt> classes) indicates that your program will
allow either zero or one occurrence of the option to be specified.</li>
<li><a name="cl::ZeroOrMore">The <b><tt>cl::ZeroOrMore</tt></b></a> modifier
(which is the default for the <tt><a href="#cl::list">cl::list</a></tt> class)
indicates that your program will allow the option to be specified zero or more
times.</li>
<li><a name="cl::Required">The <b><tt>cl::Required</tt></b></a> modifier
indicates that the specified option must be specified exactly one time.</li>
<li><a name="cl::OneOrMore">The <b><tt>cl::OneOrMore</tt></b></a> modifier
indicates that the option must be specified at least one time.</li>
<li>The <b><tt>cl::ConsumeAfter</tt></b> modifier is described in the <a
href="#positional">Positional arguments section</a>.</li>
</ul>
<p>If an option is not specified, then the value of the option is equal to the
value specified by the <tt><a href="#cl::init">cl::init</a></tt> attribute. If
the <tt><a href="#cl::init">cl::init</a></tt> attribute is not specified, the
option value is initialized with the default constructor for the data type.</p>
<p>If an option is specified multiple times for an option of the <tt><a
href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a></tt> class, only the last value will be
retained.</p>
</div>
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
<h4>
<a name="valrequired">Controlling whether or not a value must be specified</a>
</h4>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>This group of options is used to control whether or not the option allows a
value to be present. In the case of the CommandLine library, a value is either
specified with an equal sign (e.g. '<tt>-index-depth=17</tt>') or as a trailing
string (e.g. '<tt>-o a.out</tt>').</p>
<p>The allowed values for this option group are:</p>
<ul>
<li><a name="cl::ValueOptional">The <b><tt>cl::ValueOptional</tt></b></a> modifier
(which is the default for <tt>bool</tt> typed options) specifies that it is
acceptable to have a value, or not. A boolean argument can be enabled just by
appearing on the command line, or it can have an explicit '<tt>-foo=true</tt>'.
If an option is specified with this mode, it is illegal for the value to be
provided without the equal sign. Therefore '<tt>-foo true</tt>' is illegal. To
get this behavior, you must use the <a
href="#cl::ValueRequired">cl::ValueRequired</a> modifier.</li>
<li><a name="cl::ValueRequired">The <b><tt>cl::ValueRequired</tt></b></a> modifier
(which is the default for all other types except for <a
href="#onealternative">unnamed alternatives using the generic parser</a>)
specifies that a value must be provided. This mode informs the command line
library that if an option is not provides with an equal sign, that the next
argument provided must be the value. This allows things like '<tt>-o
a.out</tt>' to work.</li>
<li><a name="cl::ValueDisallowed">The <b><tt>cl::ValueDisallowed</tt></b></a>
modifier (which is the default for <a href="#onealternative">unnamed
alternatives using the generic parser</a>) indicates that it is a runtime error
for the user to specify a value. This can be provided to disallow users from
providing options to boolean options (like '<tt>-foo=true</tt>').</li>
</ul>
<p>In general, the default values for this option group work just like you would
want them to. As mentioned above, you can specify the <a
href="#cl::ValueDisallowed">cl::ValueDisallowed</a> modifier to a boolean
argument to restrict your command line parser. These options are mostly useful
when <a href="#extensionguide">extending the library</a>.</p>
</div>
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
<h4>
<a name="formatting">Controlling other formatting options</a>
</h4>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>The formatting option group is used to specify that the command line option
has special abilities and is otherwise different from other command line
arguments. As usual, you can only specify one of these arguments at most.</p>
<ul>
<li><a name="cl::NormalFormatting">The <b><tt>cl::NormalFormatting</tt></b></a>
modifier (which is the default all options) specifies that this option is
"normal".</li>
<li><a name="cl::Positional">The <b><tt>cl::Positional</tt></b></a> modifier
specifies that this is a positional argument that does not have a command line
option associated with it. See the <a href="#positional">Positional
Arguments</a> section for more information.</li>
<li>The <b><a href="#cl::ConsumeAfter"><tt>cl::ConsumeAfter</tt></a></b> modifier
specifies that this option is used to capture "interpreter style" arguments. See <a href="#cl::ConsumeAfter">this section for more information</a>.</li>
<li><a name="cl::Prefix">The <b><tt>cl::Prefix</tt></b></a> modifier specifies
that this option prefixes its value. With 'Prefix' options, the equal sign does
not separate the value from the option name specified. Instead, the value is
everything after the prefix, including any equal sign if present. This is useful
for processing odd arguments like <tt>-lmalloc</tt> and <tt>-L/usr/lib</tt> in a
linker tool or <tt>-DNAME=value</tt> in a compiler tool. Here, the
'<tt>l</tt>', '<tt>D</tt>' and '<tt>L</tt>' options are normal string (or list)
options, that have the <b><tt><a href="#cl::Prefix">cl::Prefix</a></tt></b>
modifier added to allow the CommandLine library to recognize them. Note that
<b><tt><a href="#cl::Prefix">cl::Prefix</a></tt></b> options must not have the
<b><tt><a href="#cl::ValueDisallowed">cl::ValueDisallowed</a></tt></b> modifier
specified.</li>
<li><a name="cl::Grouping">The <b><tt>cl::Grouping</tt></b></a> modifier is used
to implement Unix-style tools (like <tt>ls</tt>) that have lots of single letter
arguments, but only require a single dash. For example, the '<tt>ls -labF</tt>'
command actually enables four different options, all of which are single
letters. Note that <b><tt><a href="#cl::Grouping">cl::Grouping</a></tt></b>
options cannot have values.</li>
</ul>
<p>The CommandLine library does not restrict how you use the <b><tt><a
href="#cl::Prefix">cl::Prefix</a></tt></b> or <b><tt><a
href="#cl::Grouping">cl::Grouping</a></tt></b> modifiers, but it is possible to
specify ambiguous argument settings. Thus, it is possible to have multiple
letter options that are prefix or grouping options, and they will still work as
designed.</p>
<p>To do this, the CommandLine library uses a greedy algorithm to parse the
input option into (potentially multiple) prefix and grouping options. The
strategy basically looks like this:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><tt>parse(string OrigInput) {</tt>
<ol>
<li><tt>string input = OrigInput;</tt>
<li><tt>if (isOption(input)) return getOption(input).parse();</tt> <i>// Normal option</i>
<li><tt>while (!isOption(input) && !input.empty()) input.pop_back();</tt> <i>// Remove the last letter</i>
<li><tt>if (input.empty()) return error();</tt> <i>// No matching option</i>
<li><tt>if (getOption(input).isPrefix())<br>
return getOption(input).parse(input);</tt>
<li><tt>while (!input.empty()) { <i>// Must be grouping options</i><br>
getOption(input).parse();<br>
OrigInput.erase(OrigInput.begin(), OrigInput.begin()+input.length());<br>
input = OrigInput;<br>
while (!isOption(input) && !input.empty()) input.pop_back();<br>
}</tt>
<li><tt>if (!OrigInput.empty()) error();</tt></li>
</ol>
<p><tt>}</tt></p>
</div>
</div>
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
<h4>
<a name="misc">Miscellaneous option modifiers</a>
</h4>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>The miscellaneous option modifiers are the only flags where you can specify
more than one flag from the set: they are not mutually exclusive. These flags
specify boolean properties that modify the option.</p>
<ul>
<li><a name="cl::CommaSeparated">The <b><tt>cl::CommaSeparated</tt></b></a> modifier
indicates that any commas specified for an option's value should be used to
split the value up into multiple values for the option. For example, these two
options are equivalent when <tt>cl::CommaSeparated</tt> is specified:
"<tt>-foo=a -foo=b -foo=c</tt>" and "<tt>-foo=a,b,c</tt>". This option only
makes sense to be used in a case where the option is allowed to accept one or
more values (i.e. it is a <a href="#cl::list">cl::list</a> option).</li>
<li><a name="cl::PositionalEatsArgs">The
<b><tt>cl::PositionalEatsArgs</tt></b></a> modifier (which only applies to
positional arguments, and only makes sense for lists) indicates that positional
argument should consume any strings after it (including strings that start with
a "-") up until another recognized positional argument. For example, if you
have two "eating" positional arguments, "<tt>pos1</tt>" and "<tt>pos2</tt>", the
string "<tt>-pos1 -foo -bar baz -pos2 -bork</tt>" would cause the "<tt>-foo -bar
-baz</tt>" strings to be applied to the "<tt>-pos1</tt>" option and the
"<tt>-bork</tt>" string to be applied to the "<tt>-pos2</tt>" option.</li>
<li><a name="cl::Sink">The <b><tt>cl::Sink</tt></b></a> modifier is
used to handle unknown options. If there is at least one option with
<tt>cl::Sink</tt> modifier specified, the parser passes
unrecognized option strings to it as values instead of signaling an
error. As with <tt>cl::CommaSeparated</tt>, this modifier
only makes sense with a <a href="#cl::list">cl::list</a> option.</li>
</ul>
<p>So far, these are the only three miscellaneous option modifiers.</p>
</div>
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
<h4>
<a name="response">Response files</a>
</h4>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>Some systems, such as certain variants of Microsoft Windows and
some older Unices have a relatively low limit on command-line
length. It is therefore customary to use the so-called 'response
files' to circumvent this restriction. These files are mentioned on
the command-line (using the "@file") syntax. The program reads these
files and inserts the contents into argv, thereby working around the
command-line length limits. Response files are enabled by an optional
fourth argument to
<a href="#cl::ParseEnvironmentOptions"><tt>cl::ParseEnvironmentOptions</tt></a>
and
<a href="#cl::ParseCommandLineOptions"><tt>cl::ParseCommandLineOptions</tt></a>.
</p>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<h3>
<a name="toplevel">Top-Level Classes and Functions</a>
</h3>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>Despite all of the built-in flexibility, the CommandLine option library
really only consists of one function (<a
href="#cl::ParseCommandLineOptions"><tt>cl::ParseCommandLineOptions</tt></a>)
and three main classes: <a href="#cl::opt"><tt>cl::opt</tt></a>, <a
href="#cl::list"><tt>cl::list</tt></a>, and <a
href="#cl::alias"><tt>cl::alias</tt></a>. This section describes these three
classes in detail.</p>
</div>
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
<h4>
<a name="cl::ParseCommandLineOptions">The <tt>cl::ParseCommandLineOptions</tt>
function</a>
</h4>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>The <tt>cl::ParseCommandLineOptions</tt> function is designed to be called
directly from <tt>main</tt>, and is used to fill in the values of all of the
command line option variables once <tt>argc</tt> and <tt>argv</tt> are
available.</p>
<p>The <tt>cl::ParseCommandLineOptions</tt> function requires two parameters
(<tt>argc</tt> and <tt>argv</tt>), but may also take an optional third parameter
which holds <a href="#description">additional extra text</a> to emit when the
<tt>-help</tt> option is invoked, and a fourth boolean parameter that enables
<a href="#response">response files</a>.</p>
</div>
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
<h4>
<a name="cl::ParseEnvironmentOptions">The <tt>cl::ParseEnvironmentOptions</tt>
function</a>
</h4>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>The <tt>cl::ParseEnvironmentOptions</tt> function has mostly the same effects
as <a
href="#cl::ParseCommandLineOptions"><tt>cl::ParseCommandLineOptions</tt></a>,
except that it is designed to take values for options from an environment
variable, for those cases in which reading the command line is not convenient or
desired. It fills in the values of all the command line option variables just
like <a
href="#cl::ParseCommandLineOptions"><tt>cl::ParseCommandLineOptions</tt></a>
does.</p>
<p>It takes four parameters: the name of the program (since <tt>argv</tt> may
not be available, it can't just look in <tt>argv[0]</tt>), the name of the
environment variable to examine, the optional
<a href="#description">additional extra text</a> to emit when the
<tt>-help</tt> option is invoked, and the boolean
switch that controls whether <a href="#response">response files</a>
should be read.</p>
<p><tt>cl::ParseEnvironmentOptions</tt> will break the environment
variable's value up into words and then process them using
<a href="#cl::ParseCommandLineOptions"><tt>cl::ParseCommandLineOptions</tt></a>.
<b>Note:</b> Currently <tt>cl::ParseEnvironmentOptions</tt> does not support
quoting, so an environment variable containing <tt>-option "foo bar"</tt> will
be parsed as three words, <tt>-option</tt>, <tt>"foo</tt>, and <tt>bar"</tt>,
which is different from what you would get from the shell with the same
input.</p>
</div>
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
<h4>
<a name="cl::SetVersionPrinter">The <tt>cl::SetVersionPrinter</tt>
function</a>
</h4>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>The <tt>cl::SetVersionPrinter</tt> function is designed to be called
directly from <tt>main</tt> and <i>before</i>
<tt>cl::ParseCommandLineOptions</tt>. Its use is optional. It simply arranges
for a function to be called in response to the <tt>--version</tt> option instead
of having the <tt>CommandLine</tt> library print out the usual version string
for LLVM. This is useful for programs that are not part of LLVM but wish to use
the <tt>CommandLine</tt> facilities. Such programs should just define a small
function that takes no arguments and returns <tt>void</tt> and that prints out
whatever version information is appropriate for the program. Pass the address
of that function to <tt>cl::SetVersionPrinter</tt> to arrange for it to be
called when the <tt>--version</tt> option is given by the user.</p>
</div>
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
<h4>
<a name="cl::opt">The <tt>cl::opt</tt> class</a>
</h4>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>The <tt>cl::opt</tt> class is the class used to represent scalar command line
options, and is the one used most of the time. It is a templated class which
can take up to three arguments (all except for the first have default values
though):</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
<b>namespace</b> cl {
<b>template</b> <<b>class</b> DataType, <b>bool</b> ExternalStorage = <b>false</b>,
<b>class</b> ParserClass = parser<DataType> >
<b>class</b> opt;
}
</pre></div>
<p>The first template argument specifies what underlying data type the command
line argument is, and is used to select a default parser implementation. The
second template argument is used to specify whether the option should contain
the storage for the option (the default) or whether external storage should be
used to contain the value parsed for the option (see <a href="#storage">Internal
vs External Storage</a> for more information).</p>
<p>The third template argument specifies which parser to use. The default value
selects an instantiation of the <tt>parser</tt> class based on the underlying
data type of the option. In general, this default works well for most
applications, so this option is only used when using a <a
href="#customparser">custom parser</a>.</p>
</div>
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
<h4>
<a name="cl::list">The <tt>cl::list</tt> class</a>
</h4>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>The <tt>cl::list</tt> class is the class used to represent a list of command
line options. It too is a templated class which can take up to three
arguments:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
<b>namespace</b> cl {
<b>template</b> <<b>class</b> DataType, <b>class</b> Storage = <b>bool</b>,
<b>class</b> ParserClass = parser<DataType> >
<b>class</b> list;
}
</pre></div>
<p>This class works the exact same as the <a
href="#cl::opt"><tt>cl::opt</tt></a> class, except that the second argument is
the <b>type</b> of the external storage, not a boolean value. For this class,
the marker type '<tt>bool</tt>' is used to indicate that internal storage should
be used.</p>
</div>
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
<h4>
<a name="cl::bits">The <tt>cl::bits</tt> class</a>
</h4>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>The <tt>cl::bits</tt> class is the class used to represent a list of command
line options in the form of a bit vector. It is also a templated class which
can take up to three arguments:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
<b>namespace</b> cl {
<b>template</b> <<b>class</b> DataType, <b>class</b> Storage = <b>bool</b>,
<b>class</b> ParserClass = parser<DataType> >
<b>class</b> bits;
}
</pre></div>
<p>This class works the exact same as the <a
href="#cl::opt"><tt>cl::lists</tt></a> class, except that the second argument
must be of <b>type</b> <tt>unsigned</tt> if external storage is used.</p>
</div>
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
<h4>
<a name="cl::alias">The <tt>cl::alias</tt> class</a>
</h4>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>The <tt>cl::alias</tt> class is a nontemplated class that is used to form
aliases for other arguments.</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
<b>namespace</b> cl {
<b>class</b> alias;
}
</pre></div>
<p>The <a href="#cl::aliasopt"><tt>cl::aliasopt</tt></a> attribute should be
used to specify which option this is an alias for. Alias arguments default to
being <a href="#cl::Hidden">Hidden</a>, and use the aliased options parser to do
the conversion from string to data.</p>
</div>
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
<h4>
<a name="cl::extrahelp">The <tt>cl::extrahelp</tt> class</a>
</h4>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>The <tt>cl::extrahelp</tt> class is a nontemplated class that allows extra
help text to be printed out for the <tt>-help</tt> option.</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
<b>namespace</b> cl {
<b>struct</b> extrahelp;
}
</pre></div>
<p>To use the extrahelp, simply construct one with a <tt>const char*</tt>
parameter to the constructor. The text passed to the constructor will be printed
at the bottom of the help message, verbatim. Note that multiple
<tt>cl::extrahelp</tt> <b>can</b> be used, but this practice is discouraged. If
your tool needs to print additional help information, put all that help into a
single <tt>cl::extrahelp</tt> instance.</p>
<p>For example:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
cl::extrahelp("\nADDITIONAL HELP:\n\n This is the extra help\n");
</pre></div>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<h3>
<a name="builtinparsers">Builtin parsers</a>
</h3>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>Parsers control how the string value taken from the command line is
translated into a typed value, suitable for use in a C++ program. By default,
the CommandLine library uses an instance of <tt>parser<type></tt> if the
command line option specifies that it uses values of type '<tt>type</tt>'.
Because of this, custom option processing is specified with specializations of
the '<tt>parser</tt>' class.</p>
<p>The CommandLine library provides the following builtin parser
specializations, which are sufficient for most applications. It can, however,
also be extended to work with new data types and new ways of interpreting the
same data. See the <a href="#customparser">Writing a Custom Parser</a> for more
details on this type of library extension.</p>
<ul>
<li><a name="genericparser">The <b>generic <tt>parser<t></tt> parser</b></a>
can be used to map strings values to any data type, through the use of the <a
href="#cl::values">cl::values</a> property, which specifies the mapping
information. The most common use of this parser is for parsing enum values,
which allows you to use the CommandLine library for all of the error checking to
make sure that only valid enum values are specified (as opposed to accepting
arbitrary strings). Despite this, however, the generic parser class can be used
for any data type.</li>
<li><a name="boolparser">The <b><tt>parser<bool></tt> specialization</b></a>
is used to convert boolean strings to a boolean value. Currently accepted
strings are "<tt>true</tt>", "<tt>TRUE</tt>", "<tt>True</tt>", "<tt>1</tt>",
"<tt>false</tt>", "<tt>FALSE</tt>", "<tt>False</tt>", and "<tt>0</tt>".</li>
<li><a name="boolOrDefaultparser">The <b><tt>parser<boolOrDefault></tt>
specialization</b></a> is used for cases where the value is boolean,
but we also need to know whether the option was specified at all. boolOrDefault
is an enum with 3 values, BOU_UNSET, BOU_TRUE and BOU_FALSE. This parser accepts
the same strings as <b><tt>parser<bool></tt></b>.</li>
<li><a name="stringparser">The <b><tt>parser<string></tt>
specialization</b></a> simply stores the parsed string into the string value
specified. No conversion or modification of the data is performed.</li>
<li><a name="intparser">The <b><tt>parser<int></tt> specialization</b></a>
uses the C <tt>strtol</tt> function to parse the string input. As such, it will
accept a decimal number (with an optional '+' or '-' prefix) which must start
with a non-zero digit. It accepts octal numbers, which are identified with a
'<tt>0</tt>' prefix digit, and hexadecimal numbers with a prefix of
'<tt>0x</tt>' or '<tt>0X</tt>'.</li>
<li><a name="doubleparser">The <b><tt>parser<double></tt></b></a> and
<b><tt>parser<float></tt> specializations</b> use the standard C
<tt>strtod</tt> function to convert floating point strings into floating point
values. As such, a broad range of string formats is supported, including
exponential notation (ex: <tt>1.7e15</tt>) and properly supports locales.
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<h2>
<a name="extensionguide">Extension Guide</a>
</h2>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
<p>Although the CommandLine library has a lot of functionality built into it
already (as discussed previously), one of its true strengths lie in its
extensibility. This section discusses how the CommandLine library works under
the covers and illustrates how to do some simple, common, extensions.</p>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<h3>
<a name="customparser">Writing a custom parser</a>
</h3>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>One of the simplest and most common extensions is the use of a custom parser.
As <a href="#builtinparsers">discussed previously</a>, parsers are the portion
of the CommandLine library that turns string input from the user into a
particular parsed data type, validating the input in the process.</p>
<p>There are two ways to use a new parser:</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p>Specialize the <a href="#genericparser"><tt>cl::parser</tt></a> template for
your custom data type.<p>
<p>This approach has the advantage that users of your custom data type will
automatically use your custom parser whenever they define an option with a value
type of your data type. The disadvantage of this approach is that it doesn't
work if your fundamental data type is something that is already supported.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Write an independent class, using it explicitly from options that need
it.</p>
<p>This approach works well in situations where you would line to parse an
option using special syntax for a not-very-special data-type. The drawback of
this approach is that users of your parser have to be aware that they are using
your parser instead of the builtin ones.</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>To guide the discussion, we will discuss a custom parser that accepts file
sizes, specified with an optional unit after the numeric size. For example, we
would like to parse "102kb", "41M", "1G" into the appropriate integer value. In
this case, the underlying data type we want to parse into is
'<tt>unsigned</tt>'. We choose approach #2 above because we don't want to make
this the default for all <tt>unsigned</tt> options.</p>
<p>To start out, we declare our new <tt>FileSizeParser</tt> class:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
<b>struct</b> FileSizeParser : <b>public</b> cl::basic_parser<<b>unsigned</b>> {
<i>// parse - Return true on error.</i>
<b>bool</b> parse(cl::Option &O, <b>const char</b> *ArgName, <b>const</b> std::string &ArgValue,
<b>unsigned</b> &Val);
};
</pre></div>
<p>Our new class inherits from the <tt>cl::basic_parser</tt> template class to
fill in the default, boiler plate code for us. We give it the data type that
we parse into, the last argument to the <tt>parse</tt> method, so that clients of
our custom parser know what object type to pass in to the parse method. (Here we
declare that we parse into '<tt>unsigned</tt>' variables.)</p>
<p>For most purposes, the only method that must be implemented in a custom
parser is the <tt>parse</tt> method. The <tt>parse</tt> method is called
whenever the option is invoked, passing in the option itself, the option name,
the string to parse, and a reference to a return value. If the string to parse
is not well-formed, the parser should output an error message and return true.
Otherwise it should return false and set '<tt>Val</tt>' to the parsed value. In
our example, we implement <tt>parse</tt> as:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
<b>bool</b> FileSizeParser::parse(cl::Option &O, <b>const char</b> *ArgName,
<b>const</b> std::string &Arg, <b>unsigned</b> &Val) {
<b>const char</b> *ArgStart = Arg.c_str();
<b>char</b> *End;
<i>// Parse integer part, leaving 'End' pointing to the first non-integer char</i>
Val = (unsigned)strtol(ArgStart, &End, 0);
<b>while</b> (1) {
<b>switch</b> (*End++) {
<b>case</b> 0: <b>return</b> false; <i>// No error</i>
<b>case</b> 'i': <i>// Ignore the 'i' in KiB if people use that</i>
<b>case</b> 'b': <b>case</b> 'B': <i>// Ignore B suffix</i>
<b>break</b>;
<b>case</b> 'g': <b>case</b> 'G': Val *= 1024*1024*1024; <b>break</b>;
<b>case</b> 'm': <b>case</b> 'M': Val *= 1024*1024; <b>break</b>;
<b>case</b> 'k': <b>case</b> 'K': Val *= 1024; <b>break</b>;
default:
<i>// Print an error message if unrecognized character!</i>
<b>return</b> O.error("'" + Arg + "' value invalid for file size argument!");
}
}
}
</pre></div>
<p>This function implements a very simple parser for the kinds of strings we are
interested in. Although it has some holes (it allows "<tt>123KKK</tt>" for
example), it is good enough for this example. Note that we use the option
itself to print out the error message (the <tt>error</tt> method always returns
true) in order to get a nice error message (shown below). Now that we have our
parser class, we can use it like this:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
<b>static</b> <a href="#cl::opt">cl::opt</a><<b>unsigned</b>, <b>false</b>, FileSizeParser>
MFS(<i>"max-file-size"</i>, <a href="#cl::desc">cl::desc</a>(<i>"Maximum file size to accept"</i>),
<a href="#cl::value_desc">cl::value_desc</a>("<i>size</i>"));
</pre></div>
<p>Which adds this to the output of our program:</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
OPTIONS:
-help - display available options (-help-hidden for more)
...
<b>-max-file-size=<size> - Maximum file size to accept</b>
</pre></div>
<p>And we can test that our parse works correctly now (the test program just
prints out the max-file-size argument value):</p>
<div class="doc_code"><pre>
$ ./test
MFS: 0
$ ./test -max-file-size=123MB
MFS: 128974848
$ ./test -max-file-size=3G
MFS: 3221225472
$ ./test -max-file-size=dog
-max-file-size option: 'dog' value invalid for file size argument!
</pre></div>
<p>It looks like it works. The error message that we get is nice and helpful,
and we seem to accept reasonable file sizes. This wraps up the "custom parser"
tutorial.</p>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<h3>
<a name="explotingexternal">Exploiting external storage</a>
</h3>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>Several of the LLVM libraries define static <tt>cl::opt</tt> instances that
will automatically be included in any program that links with that library.
This is a feature. However, sometimes it is necessary to know the value of the
command line option outside of the library. In these cases the library does or
should provide an external storage location that is accessible to users of the
library. Examples of this include the <tt>llvm::DebugFlag</tt> exported by the
<tt>lib/Support/Debug.cpp</tt> file and the <tt>llvm::TimePassesIsEnabled</tt>
flag exported by the <tt>lib/VMCore/Pass.cpp</tt> file.</p>
<p>TODO: complete this section</p>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<h3>
<a name="dynamicopts">Dynamically adding command line options</a>
</h3>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>TODO: fill in this section</p>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<hr>
<address>
<a href="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/check/referer"><img
src="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/images/vcss-blue" alt="Valid CSS"></a>
<a href="http://validator.w3.org/check/referer"><img
src="http://www.w3.org/Icons/valid-html401-blue" alt="Valid HTML 4.01"></a>
<a href="mailto:sabre@nondot.org">Chris Lattner</a><br>
<a href="http://llvm.org/">LLVM Compiler Infrastructure</a><br>
Last modified: $Date$
</address>
</body>
</html>
|
