OptionParser

OptionParser is a class for command-line option analysis. It is much more advanced, yet also easier to use, than GetoptLong, and is a more Ruby-oriented solution.

Features

1. The argument specification and the code to handle it are written in the same place.
2. It can output an option summary; you don't need to maintain this string separately.
3. Optional and mandatory arguments are specified very gracefully.
4. Arguments can be automatically converted to a specified class.
5. Arguments can be restricted to a certain set.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'optparse'

And then execute:

$ bundle install

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install optparse

Usage

Full documentation is here.

require 'optparse'

options = {}
OptionParser.new do |opts|
  opts.banner = "Usage: example.rb [options]"

  opts.on("-v", "--[no-]verbose", "Run verbosely") do |v|
    options[:verbose] = v
  end
end.parse!

p options
p ARGV

Development

After checking out the repo, run bundle install to install dependencies. Then, run rake test to run the tests.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/ruby/optparse.