Rust Command Line Arguments Using clap
Example
For larger command line programs, using std::env::args() is quite tedious and difficult to manage. You can use clap to handle your command line interface, which will parse arguments, generate help displays and avoid bugs.
There are several patterns that you can use with clap, and each one provides a different amount of flexibility.
Builder Pattern
This is the most verbose (and flexible) method, so it is useful when you need fine-grained control of your CLI.
clap distinguishes between subcommands and arguments. Subcommands act like independent subprograms in your main program, just like cargo run and git push. They can have their own command-line options and inputs. Arguments are simple flags such as --verbose, and they can take inputs (e.g. --message "Hello, world")
extern crate clap;
use clap::{Arg, App, SubCommand};
fn main() {
let app = App::new("Foo Server")
.about("Serves foos to the world!")
.version("v0.1.0")
.author("Foo (@Example on GitHub)")
.subcommand(SubCommand::with_name("run")
.about("Runs the Foo Server")
.arg(Arg::with_name("debug")
.short("D")
.about("Sends debug foos instead of normal foos.")))
// This parses the command-line arguments for use.
let matches = app.get_matches();
// We can get the subcommand used with matches.subcommand(), which
// returns a tuple of (&str, Option<ArgMatches>) where the &str
// is the name of the subcommand, and the ArgMatches is an
// ArgMatches struct:
// https://docs.rs/clap/2.13.0/clap/struct.ArgMatches.html
if let ("run", Some(run_matches)) = app.subcommand() {
println!("Run was used!");
}
}
