htcw_CliUtility 1.0.1

CliUtility

Provides command line argument parsing, usage screen generation, word wrapping and stale file checking useful for CLI apps

Command Line Parsing

There are two ways to do command line argument definitions. One way is to build a list of CmdSwitch instances. The other way is to use the [CmdArg(...)] attribute to mark up static fields or properties on a type (typically your main Program class). Those fields can then be automatically filled in by this library.

the function ParseArguments() can be used to retrieve the parsed information or ParseAndSet() if using the [CmdArg()] method which handles reflecting, parsing, and setting the fields.

Simple example

A simple word wrapping application that takes a series of input files and an optional switch "wrap" that specifies the columns to wrap to:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Reflection;

using Cli;

[assembly: AssemblyDescription("An example of command line argument processing")]

internal class Program
{
	[CmdArg(Ordinal = 0)]
	static TextReader[] inputs = { Console.In };
	[CmdArg(Optional = true, Description = "The width to wrap to in characters")]
	static int wrap = Console.WindowWidth;
	static void Main()
	{
		try
		{

			using (var result = CliUtility.ParseAndSet(typeof(Program)))
			{
				foreach (var input in inputs)
				{
					Console.WriteLine();
					Console.WriteLine(CliUtility.WordWrap(input.ReadToEnd(), wrap));

				}
			}
		}
		catch (Exception ex)
		{
			Console.Error.WriteLine(ex.Message);
		}
	}
}

The following using screen is produced:

Example v1.0.0.0

An example of command line argument processing

Usage: Example { <inputfile1>,  <inputfile2>, ... } [ /wrap <item> ]

    <inputfile> The input file. Defaults to <stdin>
    <item>      The width to wrap to in characters. Defaults to 120