How to access command-line arguments passed to a Go program?

Question

How do I access command-line arguments in Go? They\'re not passed as arguments to main.

A complete program, possibly created by linking m

Answer 1

Quick Answer:

package main

import ("fmt"
        "os"
)

func main() {
    argsWithProg := os.Args
    argsWithoutProg := os.Args[1:]
    arg := os.Args[3]
    fmt.Println(argsWithProg)
    fmt.Println(argsWithoutProg)
    fmt.Println(arg)
}

Test: $ go run test.go 1 2 3 4 5

Out:

[/tmp/go-build162373819/command-line-arguments/_obj/exe/modbus 1 2 3 4 5]
[1 2 3 4 5]
3

NOTE: os.Args provides access to raw command-line arguments. Note that the first value in this slice is the path to the program, and os.Args[1:] holds the arguments to the program. Reference

Answer 2

Command line arguments can be found in os.Args. In most cases though the package flag is better because it does the argument parsing for you.

Answer 3

you can use the Golang flag package for example,

package main

import (
    "flag"
    "fmt"
)

func main() {

    wordPtr := flag.String("word", "default value", "a string for description")
    flag.Parse()
    fmt.Println("word:", *wordPtr)

}

call with cli

 go run main.go -word=hello
 
 

output

word: hello

Answer 4

You can access the command-line arguments using the os.Args variable. For example,

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "os"
)

func main() {
    fmt.Println(len(os.Args), os.Args)
}

You can also use the flag package, which implements command-line flag parsing.

Answer 5

Flag is a good package for that.

// [_Command-line flags_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command-line_interface#Command-line_option)
// are a common way to specify options for command-line
// programs. For example, in `wc -l` the `-l` is a
// command-line flag.

package main

// Go provides a `flag` package supporting basic
// command-line flag parsing. We'll use this package to
// implement our example command-line program.
import "flag"
import "fmt"

func main() {

    // Basic flag declarations are available for string,
    // integer, and boolean options. Here we declare a
    // string flag `word` with a default value `"foo"`
    // and a short description. This `flag.String` function
    // returns a string pointer (not a string value);
    // we'll see how to use this pointer below.
    wordPtr := flag.String("word", "foo", "a string")

    // This declares `numb` and `fork` flags, using a
    // similar approach to the `word` flag.
    numbPtr := flag.Int("numb", 42, "an int")
    boolPtr := flag.Bool("fork", false, "a bool")

    // It's also possible to declare an option that uses an
    // existing var declared elsewhere in the program.
    // Note that we need to pass in a pointer to the flag
    // declaration function.
    var svar string
    flag.StringVar(&svar, "svar", "bar", "a string var")

    // Once all flags are declared, call `flag.Parse()`
    // to execute the command-line parsing.
    flag.Parse()

    // Here we'll just dump out the parsed options and
    // any trailing positional arguments. Note that we
    // need to dereference the pointers with e.g. `*wordPtr`
    // to get the actual option values.
    fmt.Println("word:", *wordPtr)
    fmt.Println("numb:", *numbPtr)
    fmt.Println("fork:", *boolPtr)
    fmt.Println("svar:", svar)
    fmt.Println("tail:", flag.Args())
}

Answer 6

Peter's answer is exactly what you need if you just want a list of arguments.

However, if you're looking for functionality similar to that present on UNIX, then you could use the go implementation of docopt. You can try it here.

docopt will return JSON that you can then process to your heart's content.