Don't Overlook Efficient C/C++ Cmd Line Processing

An anonymous reader writes "Command-line processing is historically one of the most ignored areas in software development. Just about any relatively complicated software has dozens of available command-line options. The GNU tool gperf is a "perfect" hash function that, for a given set of user-provided strings, generates C/C++ code for a hash table, a hash function, and a lookup function. This article provides a reference for a good discussion on how to use gperf for effective command-line processing in your C/C++ code."

Comments

Re:C++ I get

[V. Mole]

There's this little project of which you may have heard: http://www.kernel.org/

Re:Speed in options parsing?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not a real programmer if you won't over optimize unrelevant parts of your code.

Re:Speed in options parsing?

[ai3]

You must not have seen the recent proposal for GNU tools options, which will require four dashes instead of two and a minimum of four words per option. Under a UN/EU funded program to ease the transition to intelligent machines, developers are rewarded for implementing full-sentence options and/or prose. But initial experiments showed that many users where unwilling to wait for the parsing of the command "remove-files --recursively-from-root-directory --do-not-ask-for-confirmation-just-delete --i-really-want-this!" just to be 1337, which led to whatever development efforts are mentioned in the article, which I didn't read.

Is this a fucking joke?

[pclminion]

Where's the Foot icon? Optimizing command line parsing? Oh God, my sides are splitting.

Re:Speed in options parsing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this will help maintainability but a consistent and standardized naming convention is helpful too.

function ifYouThoughtYouWereGoingToEditThisFileUsingATermin alBasedEditorThenYouNeedToThinkAgainOhYeahIIndentU singTabsToo()
{
/* */
}

Re:Speed in options parsing?

[Maniac-X]

Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' - they have 'arguments.' AND THEY ALWAYS WIN THEM!

Re:Speed in options parsing?

[smittyoneeach]

Writing code--drudge work.
Writing code that writes code--now we're thinking!

Re:All the world is not a PC

[mikael]

I thought that read kibobytes, or maybe even kibblebytes

Re:Byte counts when compiled with devkitARM

[sholden]

It's not pushing it all. It's storage, it's network attached, it's in a box... What I am pushing is the poor little linksys device. It's plugged into 4 USB hard drives (plus a thumb drive, but that's just for booting) which it's running software RAID5 on. Poor little thing, if it could scream I'm sure it would be. Sadly it's the only machine with a C++ compiler on it at home these days...

Please don't tell the poor thing it's running on MIPS, the ARMv5TE kernel might just freak out and collapse the universe.

Re:Speed in options parsing?

[muridae]

Writing code that writes code--now we're thinking!

But what could we call this code, a compiler? Nah, I think we need to think of another word for it.