.. contents:: Table of Contents

.. |duck| unicode:: 0x1F986

duckargs |duck|

Brief description

The purpose of duckargs is to save some typing whenever you want to quickly create a python program or C program that accepts command line arguments. Just run duckargs (generates python), duckargs-python (also generates python) or duckargs-c (generates C) with all the options/arguments that you want your program to accept, and duckargs will print the code for a program that handles those options/arguments.

Longer description

If you're like me, then you often need to create little throwaway command-line tools, but not often enough to remember the exact syntax/details of argparse or getopt.h, so you often start these efforts by looking up the relevant docs and refreshing your memory.

Next, you spend some time typing out the boilerplate arg-parsing code, with one eye on the docs, and eventually (depending on how much arg-parsing boilerplate code you need) you may forget some interesting detail that was part of your original idea, or you may just get sick of it and decide that you don't event need a command-line tool, and you'll do the thing manually instead.

duckargs makes this process a little bit simpler, and shortens the time between your idea and having a working C or Python program.

Let's imagine that you want to create a little command-line tool that accepts the following command line options/arguments:

A positional argument, string
An optional integer value (-i or --intval)
An optional float value (-f or --floatval)
A flag (-q)

You can run duckargs and pass all those options/arguments/flags, and duckargs will generate a working program with all the boilerplate taken care of:

Generating Python

.. code::

$ duckargs somestring -i --intval 99 -f --floatval 7.7 -q

Output

.. code::

# Generated by duckargs, invoked with the following arguments:
# somestring -i --intval 99 -f --floatval 7.7 -q

import argparse

def main():
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='A command-line program generated by duckargs',
                                     formatter_class=argparse.ArgumentDefaultsHelpFormatter)

    parser.add_argument('somestring', help='a string')
    parser.add_argument('-i', '--intval', default=99, type=int, help='an int value')
    parser.add_argument('-f', '--floatval', default=7.7, type=float, help='a float value')
    parser.add_argument('-q', action='store_true', help='q flag')
    args = parser.parse_args()

    print(args.somestring)
    print(args.intval)
    print(args.floatval)
    print(args.q)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Generating C

.. code::

$ duckargs-c somestring -i --intval 99 -f --floatval 7.7 -q

Output

.. code::

// Generated by duckargs, invoked with the following arguments:
// somestring -i --intval 99 -f --floatval 7.7 -q

#include <stdbool.h>
#include <getopt.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>

static char *somestring = "somestring";
static long int intval = 99;
static float floatval = 7.7;
static bool q = false;

static struct option long_options[] =
{
    {"intval", required_argument, NULL, 'i'},
    {"floatval", required_argument, NULL, 'f'},
    {NULL, 0, NULL, 0}
};

void print_usage(void)
{
    printf("\n");
    printf("USAGE:\n\n");
    printf("program_name [OPTIONS] somestring\n");
    printf("\nOPTIONS:\n\n");
    printf("-i --intval [int]      An int value (default: %ld)\n", int);
    printf("-f --floatval [float]  A float value (default: %.2f)\n", float);
    printf("-q                     A flag\n");
    printf("\n");
}

int parse_args(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    char *endptr = NULL;
    int ch;

    while ((ch = getopt_long(argc, argv, "i:f:q", long_options, NULL)) != -1)
    {
        switch (ch)
        {
            case 'i':
            {
                intval = strtol(optarg, &endptr, 0);
                if (endptr && (*endptr != '\0'))
                {
                    printf("Option '-i' requires an integer argument\n");
                    return -1;
                }
                break;
            }
            case 'f':
            {
                floatval = strtof(optarg, &endptr);
                if (endptr == optarg)
                {
                    printf("Option '-f' requires a floating-point argument\n");
                    return -1;
                }
                break;
            }
            case 'q':
            {
                q = true;
                break;
            }
        }
    }

    if (argc < (optind + 1))
    {
        printf("Missing positional arguments\n");
        return -1;
    }

    somestring = argv[optind];

    return 0;
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    if (argc < 2)
    {
        print_usage();
        return -1;
    }

    int ret = parse_args(argc, argv);
    if (0 != ret)
    {
        return ret;
    }

    printf("somestring: %s\n", somestring ? somestring : "null");
    printf("intval: %ld\n", intval);
    printf("floatval: %.4f\n", floatval);
    printf("q: %s\n", q ? "true" : "false");

    return 0;
}

Install

Install with pip (python 3x required):

pip install duckargs

Comma-separated choices for option argument

If you have an option which accepts an argument, and you write an argument string with multiple values separated by commas (e.g. -m --mode active,idle,sim), then generated python code will use the comma-separated values as a choices list for argparse:

.. code:: python

parser.add_argument('-m', '--mode', choices=['active', 'idle', 'sim'], default='active', help='a string')

And generated C code will use the comma-separated values to restrict values in a similar manner:

.. code:: c

static char *mode_choices[] = {"active", "idle", "stop"};
static char *mode = "active";

static struct option long_options[] =
{
    {"mode", required_argument, NULL, 'm'},
    {NULL, 0, NULL, 0}
};

void print_usage(void)
{
    printf("\n");
    printf("USAGE:\n\n");
    printf("program_name [OPTIONS]\n");
    printf("\nOPTIONS:\n\n");
    printf("-m --mode [active|idle|stop]  A string value (default: %s)\n", mode ? mode : "null");
    printf("\n");
}

int parse_args(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    int ch;

    while ((ch = getopt_long(argc, argv, "m:", long_options, NULL)) != -1)
    {
        switch (ch)
        {
            case 'm':
            {
                mode = optarg;
                for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
                {
                    if (0 == strcmp(mode_choices[i], mode))
                    {
                        break;
                    }
                    if (i == 2)
                    {
                        printf("Option '-m' must be one of ['active', 'idle', 'stop']\n");
                        return -1;
                    }
                }
                break;
            }
        }
    }

    return 0;
}

Filenames for option arguments

If you have an option that you want to accept a filename, you have two ways to tell duckargs that the option argument should be treated as a file:

Pass the path to a file that actually exists (e.g. -f --filename file.txt) as the option argument
Pass FILE as the option argument (e.g. -f --filename FILE)

Either of which will generate python code like this:

.. code:: python

parser.add_argument('-f', '--filename', default='file', type=argparse.FileType(), help='a filename')

And will generate C code like this:

.. code:: c

static char *filename = NULL;

static struct option long_options[] =
{
    {"filename", required_argument, NULL, 'f'},
    {NULL, 0, NULL, 0}
};

void print_usage(void)
{
    printf("\n");
    printf("USAGE:\n\n");
    printf("program_name [OPTIONS]\n");
    printf("\nOPTIONS:\n\n");
    printf("-f --filename FILE  A filename (default: %s)\n", filename ? filename : "null");
    printf("\n");
}

int parse_args(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    int ch;

    while ((ch = getopt_long(argc, argv, "f:", long_options, NULL)) != -1)
    {
        switch (ch)
        {
            case 'f':
            {
                filename = optarg;
                break;
            }
        }
    }

    return 0;
}

Environment variables

Some things can be configured by setting environment variables.

DUCKARGS_PRINT ##################

By default, duckargs generates a program that prints all provided arguments/options to stdout after argument parsing is complete

Duckargs

Install / Use

README

duckargs |duck|

Brief description

Longer description

Install

Comma-separated choices for option argument

Filenames for option arguments

Environment variables