Trollop 1.5 Released

Ruby
1

Trollop version 1.5 has been released!

http://trollop.rubyforge.org

Trollop is YAFCLAP — yet another fine commandline argument
processing library for Ruby. Trollop is designed to provide the
maximal amount of GNU-style argument processing in the minimum number
of lines of code (for you, the programmer).

Trollop provides a nice automatically-generated help page, robust
option parsing, and sensible defaults for everything you don’t
specify.

Synopsis:

simple

opts = Trollop::options do
opt :monkey, “Use monkey mode.”
opt :goat, “Use goat model”, :default => true
opt :num_limbs, “Set number of limbs”, :default => 4
end

p opts

complex

opts = Trollop::options do
version “test 1.2.3 (c) 2007 William M.”
banner <<-EOS
Test is an awesome program that does something very, very important.

Usage:
test [options] +
where [options] are:
EOS

opt :ignore, "Ignore incorrect values"
opt :file, "Extra data filename to read in, with a very long option

description like this one", :type => String
opt :volume, “Volume level”, :default => 3.0
opt :iters, “Number of iterations”, :default => 5
end
Trollop::die :volume, “must be non-negative” if opts[:volume] < 0
Trollop::die :file, “must exist” unless File.exists?(opts[:file]) if
opts[:file]

== REQUIREMENTS:

  • none

Changes:

== 1.5 / 2007-03-31

  • –help and --version do the right thing even if the rest of the
    command line is incorrect.

  • Added #conflicts and #depends to model dependencies and exclusivity
    between arguments.

  • Minor bugfixes.

    http://trollop.rubyforge.org

2

2007/4/1, William M. [email protected]:

option parsing, and sensible defaults for everything you don’t
end
Usage:
Trollop::die :file, “must exist” unless File.exists?(opts[:file]) if opts[:file]

–
William [email protected]

Hi William,

it’s indeed a really nice parser. I especially liked how it’s small
and still very powerful. What do you think it would take to add a
groff → man output generator ?

3

Excerpts from Jonas P.'s message of Sun Apr 01 02:57:54 -0700
2007:

it’s indeed a really nice parser. I especially liked how it’s small
and still very powerful. What do you think it would take to add a
groff -> man output generator ?

There’s a gnu tool called “help2man” that works very well at turning
Trollop output into a man page, especially if you format things how it
expects them.

I’ve just release version 1.6, which doesn’t do the curses screen-width
detection magic unless it’s running on a terminal. This is necessary for
help2man (and “less”!) to work right.

4

2007/4/2, William M. [email protected]:

detection magic unless it’s running on a terminal. This is necessary for
help2man (and “less”!) to work right.

Cool ! I might try it on my next project. Do you plan to add a default
usage if no banner is given ? Something like : “Usage :
#{File.basename($0)} [OPTIONS] …”.