NAME

clig - generate a command line parser and/or basic manual page

SYNOPSIS

clig [-t types] [-o outprefix] [-m manFile] [-mx manExt] [-d] infile

OPTIONS

-t: the types of output to generate. Currently supported types are `C', `tcl' and `man',
1 or more String values
Default: `C' `man'
-o: name of .c and .h file if type C is requested Default: infile with suffix removed,
1 String value
-m: manual page to edit or generate if type man is requested Default: `Name' specified in input file,
1 String value
-mx: extension of manual page,
1 String value
Default: `.1'
-d: generate the function showOptionValues if type C is requested .
infile: name of file which contains the command line specification.

DESCRIPTION

Clig reads infile and creates the output as requested by option -t. Most often you will just use the default to create a command line interpreter for your C program as well as the skeleton of a manual page. One of the main reasons to use clig is, that besides the command line interpreter, a usage() function and a manual page are generated, which are always up-to-date with respect to the options actually understood by the program.

Currently, options of type Flag, String, Int, Long, Float and Double are supported. Except for Flag options, all option-descriptions allow to specify how many arguments are expected for the option and whether the option is mandatory or not. For non-mandatory options, default values can be specified and will be returned by the generated command line interpreter if necessary. In addition, for floating point and integer options, a range can be declared, and the interpreter will exit the program with an error message, if the option's argument lies outside the given range.

Clig is implemented in Tcl and infile actually contains tcl-code, but under normal circumstances the user does not need to know anything about tcl, because the syntax of the description-file is described below in section "DESCRIPTION FILE" and in the manual pages clig_* as noted in the section “SEE ALSO”. (I admit that this is probably a lie, because under `normal circumstances' infile may contain syntax errors resulting in really tcl-ish error messages.)

DESCRIPTION FILE

The description-file, infile, is a line-oriented ascii-file. Each line contains a command which either describes an option or specifies additional information necessary to generate the command line interpreter or the manual page. A command starts with the command-name followed by mandatory parameters and possibly followed by options. If a command does not fit on a line, it may be continued on the next line if the previous line is terminated with a backslash (\).

The commands are described in detail in their own manual pages, but let us consider a simple example, e.g. a command to describe an option named -fs which wants exactly one parameter of type float and will be used in your program as a font size. (Note the backslash on the next line!)

Float -fs fontsize 
    {size of font in points} -d 11.0 -r 8.0 19.5

The command's name is Float. It has three fixed parameters: The first, -fs, is the string to be detected by the command line interpreter. The second, fontsize, is the name of a variable your program will use to receive the value found on the command line. The third parameter, i.e. everything between the braces, is a string which will be printed by usage(). The -d (for default) specifies that fontsize will be set to the default of 11.0, if -fs is not found on the command line. With -r (for range) you make sure that the command line interpreter will refuse any values for -fs which are not within the given range.

Mandatory Commands

The description file infile must contain the commands Name and Usage. The first gives a name to your program and the second declares a short (one-line) description for it. Both pieces of information will be used in the usage()-message as well as in the manual page.

Other Commands

Please read the manual pages listed under "SEE ALSO" below which start with clig_ to find a detailed description of all commands available in the description file infile. An example-infile can be found as /usr/local/share/doc/clig/example/cmdline.cli.

OUTPUT TYPE C

Clig generates the files outprefix.c and outprefix.h, where outprefix.h contains all declarations necessary to use the services defined in the outprefix.c. If a prefix is not given on the command line, it defaults to the name of the input file with any suffix removed.

parseCmdline

The output files implement a command line interpreter with the prototype

Cmdline *parseCmdline(int argc, char **argv);

which is meant to be called by your main() to interpret the command line given as argc and argv.

usage

The output files also implement the function

void usage(void);

custom made from the information in infile. IF parseCmdline() encounters an undeclared option on the command line, it immediately calls usage(). Therefore you should normally declare neither -h nor --help as options for your program so that usage-message can be requested with any of these options. Normally it is not necessary to call usage() directly, but it is possible.

Cmdline

The type Cmdline, a pointer to which is returned by parseCmdline(), is also declared in the generated header file. It is custom-made according to what is found in infile. If, for example, infile contains the declaration

  Float -pi pi {your personal approximation of pi}

the structure will have the three slots piP, pi and piC, where piP is a boolean set to 1 if and only if the option -r is found on the command line. In that case piC contains the number of parameters found for -r. The parameters found are stored in pi itself. It is either of type float* or float depending on whether option -r may at all have more than one argument. In the example above, this is not the case, but if you declare

  Float -ival ival {interval to consider} -c 2 2

in infile, ival must store 2 values and consequently it will be of type float* with sufficient memory allocated.

Program

To be conveniently available for error message and for use in usage(), parseCmdline() will also set the global variable

char *Program;

to the tail of argv[0].

showOptionValues

If so requested with option -d, the output will contain a function

void showOptionValues(void);

which can be called after parseCmdline() to print the structure Cmdline to stdout. This is merely for debugging purposes.

Example Main Program

The following example demonstrates the use of the command line parser, provided that outprefix = cmdline and that clig was called with option -d to generate the function showOptionValues().

#include "cmdline.h"
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
  Cmdline *cmd = parseCmdline(argc, argv);
  showOptionValues();
  /* Program is set by parseCmdline */
  printf("Program = `%s'\n", Program);
  /*****
    Your code goes here. Option parameters and cleaned-up 
    argc and argv are referenced with cmd->...
  *****/
  return 0;
}

OUTPUT TYPE tcl

In fact, output type tcl is not yet supported. However this does not mean you cannot use ::clig to instrument your Tcl-scripts. It only means that you must have ::clig installed on the machine were an instrumented script should run. Read clig_parseCmdline(n) to learn how to instrument your Tcl-script with ::clig.

OUTPUT TYPE man

Clig can generate or edit a manual page in *roff format. The name of the manual page can be specified with option -m and its suffix can be specified with -mx. By default, the name will be the string specified with the Name-command in the description file and the default suffix is .1.

If the manual page file exists, clig edits specially marked sections of the file by filling in up-to-date information. If the file does not yet exist, it copies a template file into it and then edits the template in the same way.

Clig is able to fill out the manual page sections `NAME', `SYNOPSIS', `OPTIONS' and, in a very limited way, `DESCRIPTION'. In addition it will supply a default title macro (.TH). The lines of the manual page file which are replaced by clig must be clearly marked by matching pairs of tag lines like

  .\" cligPart <section>
and
  .\" cligPart <section> end
where <section> is one of the section names listed above.

The idea is, that you edit the manual page, while clig fills in the parts that can be deduced from the description file. If you don't like what clig fills in, simply remove both tag-lines of a section and clig will leave it alone. You certainly want to do this for the DESCRIPTION-section.