optparse-package {optparse}

Command line option parser

Description

Goal is to create an R package of a command line parser inspired by Python's “optparse” library.

Details

optparse is primarily intended to be used with “Rscript”. It facilitates writing “#!” shebang scripts that accept short and long flags/options. It can also be used from directly, but is probably less useful in this context.

See package vignette for a more detailed example.

Notes on naming convention in package: 1. An option is one of the shell-split input strings. 2. A flag is a type of option. a flag can be defined as having no argument (defined below), a required argument, or an optional argument. 3. An argument is a type of option, and is the value associated with a flag. 4. A long flag is a type of flag, and begins with the string “–”. If the long flag has an associated argument, it may be delimited from the long flag by either a trailing =, or may be the subsequent option. 5. A short flag is a type of flag, and begins with the string “-”. If a short flag has an associated argument, it is the subsequent option. short flags may be bundled together, sharing a single leading “"-"”, but only the final short flag is able to have a corresponding argument. %%%

Author(s)

Trevor L. Davis.

Some documentation and unit tests ported from Allen Day's getopt package.

The documentation for Python's optparse library, which this package is based on, is Copyright 1990-2009, Python Software Foundation.

References

Python's optparse library, which this package is based on, is described here: https://docs.python.org/3/library/optparse.html

See Also

getopt

Examples

   example_file <- system.file("exec", "example.R", package = "optparse")
   example_file_2 <- system.file("exec", "display_file.R", package = "optparse")
   ## Not run: 
       readLines(example_file)
       readLines(example_file_2)
   
## End(Not run)