Command Line Argument Parser for Rust
It is a simple to use, efficient, and full featured library for parsing command line arguments and subcommands when writing console, or terminal applications.
- What's New
- About
- FAQ
- Features
- Quick Example
- Try it!
- Usage
- How to Contribute
- License
- Recent Breaking Changes
Created by gh-md-toc
If you're already familiar with clap
but just want to see some new highlights as of 1.5
- huge performance boost - parsing speed is literally half of what it used to be (and it was already fast). The following graph shows parsing speed, to include building the parser of valid arguments for a complex scenario with many arguments, relationships, and other restictions was parsed in ~10,000ns (~0.01 milliseconds)
- major refactor of code to de-dupilicate and reduce errors. This is a massive improvement and should make contributing to this project much easier.
- massive errors overhaul thanks in part to the excellent read on Error Handling by BurntSushi
- other minor bug fixes and improvements
For full details, see CHANGELOG.md
clap
is used to parse and validate the string of command line arguments provided by the user at runtime. You provide the list of valid possibilities, and clap
handles the rest. This means you focus on your applications functionality, and less on the parsing and validating of arguments.
clap
also provides the traditional version and help switches (or flags) 'for free' meaning automatically with no configuration. It does this by checking list of valid possibilities you supplied and if you haven't them already (or only defined some of them), clap
will auto-generate the applicable ones. If you are using subcommands, clap
will also auto-generate a help
subcommand for you in addition to the traditional flags.
Once clap
parses the user provided string of arguments, it returns the matches along with any applicable values. If the user made an error or typo, clap
informs them of the mistake and exits gracefully. Because of this, you can make reasonable assumptions in your code about the validity of the arguments.
For a full FAQ and more in depth details, see the wiki page
First, let me say that these comparisons are highly subjective, and not meant in a critical or harsh manner. All the argument parsing libraries out there (to include clap
) have their own strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes it just comes down to personal taste when all other factors are equal. When in doubt, try them all and pick one that you enjoy :) There's plenty of room in the Rust community for multiple implementations!
How does clap
compare to getopts?
getopts
is a very basic, fairly minimalist argument parsing library. This isn't a bad thing, sometimes you don't need tons of features, you just want to parse some simple arguments, and have some help text generated for you based on valid arguments you specify. The downside to this approach is that you must manually implement most of the common features (such as checking to display help messages, usage strings, etc.). If you want a highly custom argument parser, and don't mind writing the majority of the functionality yourself, getopts
is an excellent base.
getopts
also doesn't allocate much, or at all. This gives it somewhat of a performance boost. Although, as you start implementing additional features, that boost quickly disappears.
Personally, I find many, many people that use getopts
are manually implementing features that clap
has by default. Using clap
simplifies your codebase allowing you to focus on your application, and not argument parsing.
How does clap
compare to docopt.rs?
I first want to say I'm a big a fan of BurntSushi's work, the creator of Docopt.rs
. I aspire to produce the quality of libraries that this man does! When it comes to comparing these two libraries they are very different. docopt
tasks you with writing a help message, and then it parsers that message for you to determine all valid arguments and their use. Some people LOVE this approach, others not so much. If you're willing to write a detailed help message, it's nice that you can stick that in your program and have docopt
do the rest. On the downside, it's somewhat less flexible, and requires you to change the help message if you need to make changes.
docopt
is also excellent at translating arguments into Rust types automatically. There is even a syntax extension which will do all this for you, if you're willing to use a nightly compiler (use of a stable compiler requires you to somewhat manually translate from arguments to Rust types). To use BurntSushi's words, docopt
is also a sort of black box. You get what you get, and it's hard to tweak implementation or customise the experience for your use case.
Because docopt
is doing a ton of work to parse your help messages and determine what you were trying to communicate as valid arguments, it's also one of the more heavy weight parsers performance-wise. For most applications this isn't a concern and this isn't to say docopt
is slow, in fact from it. This is just something to keep in mind while comparing.
clap
is as fast, and as lightweight as possible while still giving all the features you'd expect from a modern argument parser. In fact, for the amount and type of features clap
offers the fact it remains about as fast as getopts
is great. If you use clap
when just need some simple arguments parsed, you'll find it a walk in the park. But clap
also makes it possible to represent extremely complex, and advanced requirements, without too much thought. clap
aims to be intuitive, easy to use, and fully capable for wide variety use cases and needs.
Below are a few of the features which clap
supports, full descriptions and usage can be found in the documentation and examples/ directory
- Auto-generated Help, Version, and Usage information
- Can optionally be fully, or partially overridden if you want a custom help, version, or usage
- Flags / Switches (i.e. bool fields)
- Both short and long versions supported (i.e.
-f
and--flag
respectively) - Supports combining short versions (i.e.
-fBgoZ
is the same as-f -B -g -o -Z
) - Optionally supports multiple occurrences (i.e.
-vvv
or-v -v -v
)
- Both short and long versions supported (i.e.
- Positional Arguments (i.e. those which are based off an index from the program name)
- Optionally supports multiple values (i.e.
myprog <file>...
such asmyprog file1.txt file2.txt
being two values for the same "file" argument) - Optionally supports Specific Value Sets (See below)
- Supports the unix
--
meaning, only positional arguments follow - Optionally sets value parameters (such as the minimum number of values, the maximum number of values, or the exact number of values)
- Optionally supports multiple values (i.e.
- Option Arguments (i.e. those that take values as options)
- Both short and long versions supported (i.e.
-o value
or-ovalue
and--option value
or--option=value
respectively) - Optionally supports multiple values (i.e.
-o <value> -o <other_value>
or the shorthand-o <value> <other_value>
) - Optionally supports Specific Value Sets (See below)
- Optionally supports named values so that the usage/help info appears as
-o <name> <other_name>
etc. for when you require specific multiple values - Optionally sets value parameters (such as the minimum number of values, the maximum number of values, or the exact number of values)
- Both short and long versions supported (i.e.
- Sub-Commands (i.e.
git add <file>
whereadd
is a sub-command ofgit
)- Support their own sub-arguments, and sub-sub-commands independent of the parent
- Get their own auto-generated Help, Version, and Usage independent of parent
- Requirement Rules: Arguments can optionally define the following types of requirement rules
- Required by default
- Required only if certain arguments are present
- Can require other arguments to be present
- Exclusion/Confliction Rules: Arguments can optionally define the following types of exclusion rules
- Can be disallowed when certain arguments are present
- Can disallow use of other arguments when present
- Groups: Arguments can optionally be made part of a group which means one, and only one argument from this "group" may be present at runtime
- Fully compatible with other relational rules (requirements and exclusions) which allows things like requiring the use of a group, or denying the use of a group conditionally
- Specific Value Sets: Positional or Option Arguments can optionally define a specific set of allowed values (i.e. imagine a
--mode
option which may only have one of two valuesfast
orslow
such as--mode fast
or--mode slow
) - Default Values: Although not specifically provided by
clap
you can achieve this exact functionality from Rust'sOption<&str>.unwrap_or("some default")
method (orResult<T,String>.unwrap_or(T)
when using typed values) - Automatic Version from Cargo.toml:
clap
is fully compatible with Rust'senv!()
macro for automatically setting the version of your application to the version in your Cargo.toml. See 09_auto_version example for how to do this (Thanks to jhelwig for pointing this out) - Typed Values: You can use several convenience macros provided by
clap
to get typed values (i.e.i32
,u8
, etc.) from positional or option arguments so long as the type you request implementsstd::str::FromStr
See the 12_typed_values example. You can also useclap
ssimple_enum!
orarg_enum!
macro to create an enum with variants that automatically implementsstd::str::FromStr
. See 13a_enum_values_automatic example for details and performs an ascii case insensitive parse from astring
->enum
. - Suggestions: Suggests corrections when the user enter's a typo. For example, if you defined a
--myoption <value>
argument, and the user mistakenly typed--moyption value
(noticey
ando
switched), they would receive aDid you mean '--myoption' ?
error and exit gracefully. This also works for subcommands and flags. (Thanks to Byron for the implementation) (This feature can optionally be disabled, see 'Optional Dependencies / Features') - Colorized (Red) Errors (Non Windows OS only): Error message are printed in red text (this feature can optionally be disabled, see 'Optional Dependencies / Features').
- Global Arguments: Arguments can optionally be defined once, and be available to all child subcommands.
- Custom Validations: You can define a function to use as a validator of argument values. Imagine defining a function to validate IP addresses, or fail parsing upon error. This means your application logic can be solely focused on using values.
- POSIX Compatible Conflicts - In POSIX args can be conflicting, but not fail parsing because whichever arg comes last "wins" to to speak. This allows things such as aliases (i.e.
alias ls='ls -l'
but then usingls -C
in your terminal which ends up passingls -l -C
as the final arguments. Since-l
and-C
aren't compatible, this effectively runsls -C
inclap
if you choose...clap
also supports hard conflicts that fail parsing). (Thanks to Vinatorul!) - Support for building CLIs from YAML - This keeps your Rust source nice and tidy!
The following examples show a quick example of some of the very basic functionality of clap
. For more advanced usage, such as requirements, exclusions, groups, multiple values and occurrences see the video tutorials, documentation, or examples/ directory of this repository.
NOTE: All these examples are functionally the same, but show three different styles in which to use clap
// (Full example with detailed comments in examples/01a_quick_example.rs)
//
// This example demonstrates clap's "usage strings" method of creating arguments which is less
// less verbose
extern crate clap;
use clap::{Arg, App, SubCommand};
fn main() {
let matches = App::new("myapp")
.version("1.0")
.author("Kevin K. <[email protected]>")
.about("Does awesome things")
.args_from_usage(
"-c --config=[CONFIG] 'Sets a custom config file'
<INPUT> 'Sets the input file to use'
[debug]... -d 'Sets the level of debugging information'")
.subcommand(SubCommand::with_name("test")
.about("controls testing features")
.version("1.3")
.author("Someone E. <[email protected]>")
.arg_from_usage("-v --verbose 'Print test information verbosely'"))
.get_matches();
// Calling .unwrap() is safe here because "INPUT" is required (if "INPUT" wasn't
// required we could have used an 'if let' to conditionally get the value)
println!("Using input file: {}", matches.value_of("INPUT").unwrap());
// Gets a value for config if supplied by user, or defaults to "default.conf"
let config = matches.value_of("CONFIG").unwrap_or("default.conf");
println!("Value for config: {}", config);
// Vary the output based on how many times the user used the "debug" flag
// (i.e. 'myapp -d -d -d' or 'myapp -ddd' vs 'myapp -d'
match matches.occurrences_of("debug") {
0 => println!("Debug mode is off"),
1 => println!("Debug mode is kind of on"),
2 => println!("Debug mode is on"),
3 | _ => println!("Don't be crazy"),
}
// You can handle information about subcommands by requesting their matches by name
// (as below), requesting just the name used, or both at the same time
if let Some(matches) = matches.subcommand_matches("test") {
if matches.is_present("verbose") {
println!("Printing verbosely...");
} else {
println!("Printing normally...");
}
}
// more program logic goes here...
}
The following example is functionally the same as the one above, but this method allows more advanced configuration options (not shown in this small example), or even dynamically generating arguments when desired. Both methods can be used together to get the best of both worlds (see the documentation, examples, or video tutorials).
// (Full example with detailed comments in examples/01b_quick_example.rs)
//
// This example demonstrates clap's full 'builder pattern' style of creating arguments which is
// more verbose, but allows easier editing, and at times more advanced options, or the possibility
// to generate arguments dynamically.
extern crate clap;
use clap::{Arg, App, SubCommand};
fn main() {
let matches = App::new("myapp")
.version("1.0")
.author("Kevin K. <[email protected]>")
.about("Does awesome things")
.arg(Arg::with_name("CONFIG")
.short("c")
.long("config")
.help("Sets a custom config file")
.takes_value(true))
.arg(Arg::with_name("INPUT")
.help("Sets the input file to use")
.required(true)
.index(1))
.arg(Arg::with_name("debug")
.short("d")
.multiple(true)
.help("Sets the level of debugging information"))
.subcommand(SubCommand::with_name("test")
.about("controls testing features")
.version("1.3")
.author("Someone E. <[email protected]>")
.arg(Arg::with_name("verbose")
.short("v")
.help("print test information verbosely")))
.get_matches();
// Calling .unwrap() is safe here because "INPUT" is required (if "INPUT" wasn't
// required we could have used an 'if let' to conditionally get the value)
println!("Using input file: {}", matches.value_of("INPUT").unwrap());
// Gets a value for config if supplied by user, or defaults to "default.conf"
let config = matches.value_of("CONFIG").unwrap_or("default.conf");
println!("Value for config: {}", config);
// Vary the output based on how many times the user used the "debug" flag
// (i.e. 'myapp -d -d -d' or 'myapp -ddd' vs 'myapp -d'
match matches.occurrences_of("debug") {
0 => println!("Debug mode is off"),
1 => println!("Debug mode is kind of on"),
2 => println!("Debug mode is on"),
3 | _ => println!("Don't be crazy"),
}
// You can handle information about subcommands by requesting their matches by name
// (as below), requesting just the name used, or both at the same time
if let Some(matches) = matches.subcommand_matches("test") {
if matches.is_present("verbose") {
println!("Printing verbosely...");
} else {
println!("Printing normally...");
}
}
// more program logic goes here...
}
The following combines the previous two examples by using the simplicity of the from_usage
methods and the performance of the Builder Pattern.
// (Full example with detailed comments in examples/01c_quick_example.rs)
//
// This example demonstrates clap's "usage strings" method of creating arguments which is less
// less verbose
#[macro_use]
extern crate clap;
fn main() {
let matches = clap_app!(myapp =>
(version: "1.0")
(author: "Kevin K. <[email protected]>")
(about: "Does awesome things")
(@arg CONFIG: -c --config +takes_value "Sets a custom config file")
(@arg INPUT: +required "Sets the input file to use")
(@arg debug: -d ... "Sets the level of debugging information")
(@subcommand test =>
(about: "controls testing features")
(version: "1.3")
(author: "Someone E. <[email protected]>")
(@arg verbose: -v --verbose "Print test information verbosely")
)
).get_matches();
// Calling .unwrap() is safe here because "INPUT" is required (if "INPUT" wasn't
// required we could have used an 'if let' to conditionally get the value)
println!("Using input file: {}", matches.value_of("INPUT").unwrap());
// Gets a value for config if supplied by user, or defaults to "default.conf"
let config = matches.value_of("CONFIG").unwrap_or("default.conf");
println!("Value for config: {}", config);
// Vary the output based on how many times the user used the "debug" flag
// (i.e. 'myapp -d -d -d' or 'myapp -ddd' vs 'myapp -d'
match matches.occurrences_of("debug") {
0 => println!("Debug mode is off"),
1 => println!("Debug mode is kind of on"),
2 => println!("Debug mode is on"),
3 | _ => println!("Don't be crazy"),
}
// You can handle information about subcommands by requesting their matches by name
// (as below), requesting just the name used, or both at the same time
if let Some(matches) = matches.subcommand_matches("test") {
if matches.is_present("verbose") {
println!("Printing verbosely...");
} else {
println!("Printing normally...");
}
}
// more program logic goes here...
}
This final method shows how you can use a YAML file to build your CLI and keep your Rust source tidy. First, create the cli.yml
file to hold your CLI options, but it could be called anything we like (we'll use the same both examples above to keep it functionally equivalent):
name: myapp
version: 1.0
author: Kevin K. <[email protected]>
about: Does awesome things
args:
- CONFIG:
short: c
long: config
help: Sets a custom config file
takes_value: true
- INPUT:
help: Sets the input file to use
required: true
index: 1
- debug:
short: d
multiple: true
help: Sets the level of debugging information
subcommands:
- test:
about: controls testing features
version: 1.3
author: Someone E. <[email protected]>
args:
- verbose:
short: v
help: print test information verbosely
Now we create our main.rs
file just like we would have with the previous two examples:
// (Full example with detailed comments in examples/17_yaml.rs)
//
// This example demonstrates clap's building from YAML style of creating arguments which is far
// more clean, but takes a very small performance hit compared to the other two methods.
#[macro_use]
extern crate clap;
use clap::App;
fn main() {
// The YAML file is found relative to the current file, similar to how modules are found
let yaml = load_yaml!("cli.yml");
let matches = App::from_yaml(yaml).get_matches();
// Calling .unwrap() is safe here because "INPUT" is required (if "INPUT" wasn't
// required we could have used an 'if let' to conditionally get the value)
println!("Using input file: {}", matches.value_of("INPUT").unwrap());
// Gets a value for config if supplied by user, or defaults to "default.conf"
let config = matches.value_of("CONFIG").unwrap_or("default.conf");
println!("Value for config: {}", config);
// Vary the output based on how many times the user used the "debug" flag
// (i.e. 'myapp -d -d -d' or 'myapp -ddd' vs 'myapp -d'
match matches.occurrences_of("debug") {
0 => println!("Debug mode is off"),
1 => println!("Debug mode is kind of on"),
2 => println!("Debug mode is on"),
3 | _ => println!("Don't be crazy"),
}
// You can handle information about subcommands by requesting their matches by name
// (as below), requesting just the name used, or both at the same time
if let Some(matches) = matches.subcommand_matches("test") {
if matches.is_present("verbose") {
println!("Printing verbosely...");
} else {
println!("Printing normally...");
}
}
// more program logic goes here...
}
If you were to compile any of the above programs and run them with the flag --help
or -h
(or help
subcommand, since we defined test
as a subcommand) the following would be output
NOTE: The YAML option requires adding a special features
flag when compiling clap
because it is not compiled by default since it takes additional dependencies that some people may not need. Simply change your clap = "1"
to clap = {version = "1", features = ["yaml"]}
in your Cargo.toml
to use the YAML version.
$ myapp --help
myapp 1.0
Kevin K. <[email protected]>
Does awesome things
USAGE:
MyApp [FLAGS] [OPTIONS] <INPUT> [SUBCOMMAND]
FLAGS:
-d Turn debugging information on
-h, --help Prints this message
-V, --version Prints version information
OPTIONS:
-c, --config <CONFIG> Sets a custom config file
ARGS:
INPUT The input file to use
SUBCOMMANDS:
help Prints this message
test Controls testing features
NOTE: You could also run myapp test --help
to see similar output and options for the test
subcommand.
To try out the pre-built example, use the following steps:
- Clone the repository
$ git clone https://github.com/kbknapp/clap-rs && cd clap-rs/clap-tests
- Compile the example
$ cargo build --release
- Run the help info
$ ./target/release/claptests --help
- Play with the arguments!
To test out clap
's default auto-generated help/version follow these steps:
- Create a new cargo project
$ cargo new fake --bin && cd fake
- Add
clap
to yourCargo.toml
[dependencies]
clap = "1"
- Add the following to your
src/main.rs
extern crate clap;
use clap::App;
fn main() {
let _ = App::new("fake").version("v1.0-beta").get_matches();
}
- Build your program
$ cargo build --release
- Run with help or version
$ ./target/release/fake --help
or$ ./target/release/fake --version
For full usage, add clap
as a dependency in your Cargo.toml
file to use from crates.io:
[dependencies]
clap = "1"
Or track the latest on the master branch at github:
[dependencies.clap]
git = "https://github.com/kbknapp/clap-rs.git"
Add extern crate clap;
to your crate root.
Define a list of valid arguments for your program (see the documentation or examples/ directory of this repo)
Then run cargo build
or cargo update && cargo build
for your project.
If you'd like to keep your dependency list to only clap
, you can disable any features that require an additional dependency. To do this, add this to your Cargo.toml
:
[dependencies.clap]
version = "1"
default-features = false
You can also selectively enable only the features you'd like to include, by adding:
[dependencies.clap]
version = "1"
default-features = false
# Cherry-pick the features you'd like to use
features = [ "suggestions", "color" ]
The following is a list of optional clap
features:
- "suggestions": Turns on the
Did you mean '--myoption' ?
feature for when users make typos. - "color": Turns on red error messages. This feature only works on non-Windows OSs.
- "lints": This is not included by default and should only be used while developing to run basic lints against changes. This can only be used on Rust nightly.
The following graphic depicts clap
s dependency graph (generated using cargo-graph).
- Dashed Line: Optional dependency
- Red Color: NOT included by default (must use cargo
features
to enable)
You can find complete documentation on the github-pages site for this project.
You can also find usage examples in the examples/ directory of this repo.
There's also the video tutorial series Argument Parsing with Rust that I've been working on.
Note: Two new videos have just been added (08 From Usage, and 09 Typed Values), if you're already familiar with clap
but want to know more about these two details you can check out those videos without watching the previous few.
Note: Apologies for the resolution of the first video, it will be updated to a better resolution soon. The other videos have a proper resolution.
Contributions are always welcome! And there is a multitude of ways in which you can help depending on what you like to do, or are good at. Anything from documentation, code cleanup, issue completion, new features, you name it, even filing issues is contributing and greatly appreciated!
Another really great way to help is if you find an interesting, or helpful way in which to use clap
. You can either add it to the examples/ directory, or file an issue and tell me. I'm all about giving credit where credit is due :)
Please read CONTRIBUTING.md before you start contributing.
If contributing, you can run the tests as follows (assuming you're in the clap-rs
directory)
cargo test --features yaml && make -C clap-tests test
There are a few goals of clap
that I'd like to maintain throughout contributions. If your proposed changes break, or go against any of these goals we'll discuss the changes further before merging (but will not be ignored, all contributes are welcome!). These are by no means hard-and-fast rules, as I'm no expert and break them myself from time to time (even if by mistake or ignorance :P).
- Remain backwards compatible when possible
- If backwards compatibility must be broken, use deprecation warnings if at all possible before removing legacy code
- This does not apply for security concerns
- Parse arguments quickly
- Parsing of arguments shouldn't slow down usage of the main program
- This is also true of generating help and usage information (although slightly less stringent, as the program is about to exit)
- Try to be cognizant of memory usage
- Once parsing is complete, the memory footprint of
clap
should be low since the main program is the star of the show
- Once parsing is complete, the memory footprint of
panic!
on developer error, exit gracefully on end-user error
clap
is licensed under the MIT license. Please read the LICENSE-MIT file in this repository for more information.
Although I do my best to keep breaking changes to a minimum, there are breaking changes from time to time in order to support better features or implementation. For the full details, see CHANGELOG.md.
- As of 1.3.0
ArgGroup::add_all
now takes&[&str]
instead of aVec<&str>
ArgGroup::requires_all
now takes&[&str]
instead of aVec<&str>
ArgGroup::conflicts_with_all
now takes&[&str]
instead of aVec<&str>
- As of 0.11.0: The default short flag for
version
has changed from-v
to-V
(Uppercase). Although you can also now override the short flag forhelp
andversion
usingApp::help_short()
andApp::version_short()
- As of 0.7.0
-
Arg::possible_values()
,Arg::value_names()
,Arg::requires_all()
,Arg::mutually_excludes_all()
[deprecated],Arg::conflicts_with_all()
- No longer take a
Vec<&str>
, instead they take a genericIntoIterator<Item=AsRef<str>>
which means you cannot use an inlinevec![]
but it means the methods are now far more flexible, especially for dynamic value generation. - Instead use something that conforms to the
IntoIterator
trait, or something like:
let my_vals = ["value1", "value2", "value3"]; ... .possible_values(&my_vals)
- No longer take a
-
Old method names will be left around for some time.
- As of 1.2.0 (Will not be removed until 2.x)
App::subcommands_negate_reqs(bool)
->AppSettings::SubcommandsNegateReqs
passed toApp::setting()
App::subcommand_required(bool)
->AppSettings::SubcommandRequired
passed toApp::setting()
App::arg_required_else_help(bool)
->AppSettings::ArgRequiredElseHelp
passed toApp::setting()
App::global_version(bool)
->AppSettings::GlobalVersion
passed toApp::setting()
App::versionless_subcommands(bool)
->AppSettings::VersionlessSubcommands
passed toApp::setting()
App::unified_help_messages(bool)
->AppSettings::UnifiedHelpMessages
passed toApp::setting()
App::wait_on_error(bool)
->AppSettings::WaitOnError
passed toApp::setting()
App::subcommand_required_else_help(bool)
->AppSettings::SubcommandRequiredElseHelp
passed toApp::setting()
- As of 0.10.0
SubCommand::new()
->SubCommand::with_name()
(Removed as of 1.0.0)App::error_on_no_subcommand()
->App::subcommand_required()
(Removed as of 1.0.0)
- As of 0.6.8
Arg::new()
->Arg::with_name()
(Removed as of 1.0.0)Arg::mutually_excludes()
->Arg::conflicts_with()
(Removed as of 1.0.0)Arg::mutually_excludes_all()
->Arg::conflicts_with_all()
(Removed as of 1.0.0)