I have never been quite happy with the flags packages available for Go, including the standard flags package as well as my own getopt packages (v1 and v2). They are just too cumbersome to use. I finally have come up with a solution that I like. github.com/pborman/options <https://godoc.org/github.com/pborman/options>
The command line options are declared as a simple structure with struct tags, for example: // Declare the command line flags. The help information does not need to line up, // I just think it looks prettier this way. var opts = struct { Help options.Help `getopt:"--help display help"` Name string `getopt:"--name=NAME name of the widget"` Count int `getopt:"--count -c=COUNT number of widgets"` Verbose bool `getopt:"-v be verbose"` Timeout time.Duration `getopt:"--timeout duration of run"` }{ Name: “gopher”, } func main() { // Assign args to the positional parameters. args := options.RegisterAndParse(&opts) fmt.Printf(“Name is: %s\n”, opts.Name) … } The command usage displayed by passing —help to the above program will look something like: Usage: prog [-v] [-c COUNT] [--help] [--name NAME] [--timeout value] [parameters ...] -c, --count=COUNT number of widgets --help display help --name=NAME name of the widget [gopher] --timeout=value duration of run -v be verbose The package is built on top of the github.com/pborman/getopt/v2 <https://godoc.org/github.com/pborman/getopt/v2> package and as such they can be used together. The options package also supports reading command line arguments from a file by using the options.Flags type. I hope that some of you might find this helpful in writing command line programs. -Paul -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "golang-nuts" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to golang-nuts+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.