Ever wanted to parse arguments in bash but felt frustrated by giant case blocks
and unfriendly syntax? Ever tried getopts
but ended up curled on the floor
sobbing? Have you ever spent sleepless nights hoping that bash argument parsing
could be as simple as python's
argparse? Maybe argparsh
is
for you.
argparsh
aims to provide an easy way to construct an argument parsing program
from any shell. Unlike most other shell CLI parsing utilities, argparsh
supports advanced features such as subcommands and even provides multiple output
formats to allow maximum flexibility. argparsh
uses python's argparse
library
for parsing, providing a familiar and well-documented interface.
aneesh@earth:~/argparsh$ cat >> argparsh.sh
# Create a parser that accepts a string and an optional int value
parser=$({
# Initialize the parser with the name of the script and a description
argparsh new $0 -d "Example parser"
# Add a positional argument - note that args after -- are options to add_arg
# and not aliases for the argument
argparsh add_arg --helptext "My string argument" strarg
# Add a keyword argument that can either be -i <value> or --intarg <value>
argparsh add_arg \
--helptext "My int argument" \
--type int \
--default 10 \
-- -i --intarg
})
# Parse the input arguments with the parser above
eval $(argparsh parse $parser -- "$@")
# Access parsed arguments by name
echo "String argument was" $strarg
echo "Integer argument was" $intarg
aneesh@earth:~/argparsh$ bash argparsh.sh -h
usage: argparsh.sh [-h] [-i INTARG] strarg
Example parser
positional arguments:
strarg My string argument
options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-i INTARG, --intarg INTARG
My int argument
aneesh@earth:~/argparsh$ bash argparsh.sh -i na Hello
usage: argparsh.sh [-h] [-i INTARG] strarg
argparsh.sh: error: argument -i/--intarg: invalid int value: 'na'
aneesh@earth:~/argparsh$ bash argparsh.sh -i 10 Hello
String argument was Hello
Integer argument was 10
See examples/example.sh
for a complete example, and examples of alternate
output formats (e.g. parsing CLI arguments into an associative array). The
examples
directory has a few other examples that show different ways to use
argparsh
in general.
More detailed help/documentation is available by running argparsh <subcommand> --help
cargo install argparsh
Or, to build from source:
git clone https://github.com/aneeshdurg/argparsh.git
cd argparsh
cargo install --path .
argparsh differs from previous attempts at improving shell argument parsing by being shell agnostic (although only bash is tested, it is relatively easy to add support for more shells, contributions are welcome), supporting subcommands/subparsers, and allowing detailed + customizable help text to be configured.
- getopts
- the OG argument handling utility. A bit clunky to use.
- argparse.sh
- similar approach, but not completely shell agnostic, and lacking in more advanced features, like subcommands.
- fish argparse
- Fish specific, but a nice utility. Not easy to use outside of fish and no subcommand support.