Parsing command-line arguments in C?

Question

I\'m trying to write a program that can compare two files line by line, word by word, or character by character in C. It has to be able to read in command line options

Answer 1

I've found Gengetopt to be quite useful - you specify the options you want with a simple configuration file, and it generates a .c/.h pair that you simply include and link with your application. The generated code makes use of getopt_long, appears to handle most common sorts of command line parameters, and it can save a lot of time.

A gengetopt input file might look something like this:

version "0.1"
package "myApp"
purpose "Does something useful."

# Options
option "filename" f "Input filename" string required
option "verbose" v "Increase program verbosity" flag off
option "id" i "Data ID" int required
option "value" r "Data value" multiple(1-) int optional 

Generating the code is easy and spits out cmdline.h and cmdline.c:

$ gengetopt --input=myApp.cmdline --include-getopt

The generated code is easily integrated:

#include 
#include "cmdline.h"

int main(int argc, char ** argv) {
  struct gengetopt_args_info ai;
  if (cmdline_parser(argc, argv, &ai) != 0) {
    exit(1);
  }
  printf("ai.filename_arg: %s\n", ai.filename_arg);
  printf("ai.verbose_flag: %d\n", ai.verbose_flag);
  printf("ai.id_arg: %d\n", ai.id_arg);
  int i;
  for (i = 0; i < ai.value_given; ++i) {
    printf("ai.value_arg[%d]: %d\n", i, ai.value_arg[i]);
  }
}

If you need to do any extra checking (such as ensuring flags are mutually exclusive), you can do this fairly easily with the data stored in the gengetopt_args_info struct.