pico-args

An ultra simple CLI arguments parser.

• Only flags, options, free arguments and subcommands are supported.
• Arguments can be separated by a space or =.
• Non UTF-8 arguments are supported.
• No help generation.
• No combined flags (like -vvv, -abc or -j1).
• Arguments are parsed in a linear order. From first to last.

Example

struct Args {
    help: bool,
    version: bool,
    number: u32,
    opt_number: Option<u32>,
    width: u32,
    free: Vec<String>,
}

fn parse_width(s: &str) -> Result<u32, String> {
    s.parse().map_err(|_| "not a number".to_string())
}

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    let mut args = pico_args::Arguments::from_env();
    // Arguments can be parsed in any order.
    let args = Args {
        // You can use a slice for multiple commands
        help: args.contains(["-h", "--help"]),
        // or just a string for a single one.
        version: args.contains("-V"),
        // Parses an optional value that implements `FromStr`.
        number: args.opt_value_from_str("--number")?.unwrap_or(5),
        // Parses an optional value that implements `FromStr`.
        opt_number: args.opt_value_from_str("--opt-number")?,
        // Parses an optional value using a specified function.
        width: args.opt_value_from_fn("--width", parse_width)?.unwrap_or(10),
        // Will return all free arguments or an error if any flags are left.
        free: args.free()?,
    };

    Ok(())
}

Alternatives

The core idea of pico-args is to provide some "sugar" for arguments parsing without a lot of overhead (binary or compilation time wise). There are no point in comparing parsing features since pico-args supports only the bare minimum. So we will compare only the size overhead and compilation time.

There are a lot of arguments parsing implementations, but we will use only these one:

• clap - is the most popular and complete one
• gumdrop - a simple parser that uses procedural macros
• structopt - a two above combined

	null	pico-args	clap	gumdrop	structopt	argh
Binary overhead	0KiB	18.8KiB	390.6KiB	22.0KiB	390.8KiB	18.1KiB
Build time	0.1s	0.5s	5.5s	9s	17.5s	6.4s
Tested version	-	0.3.1	2.33.0	0.7.0	0.3.9	0.1.3

• Binary size overhead was measured by subtracting the .text section size of an app with arguments parsing and a hello world app.
• Build time was measured using hyperfine 'cargo clean; cargo build --release'.
• Test projects can be found in test-apps/.

License

MIT