Marshall Clow wrote:
I'm trying to use boost::program_options for the first time, and there's a couple things that I am tripping over.
The first is the idea of mutually exclusive options. I can't find any support for them in the library, and that surprises me - to the point of asking for help.
I have two options, only one of which can be specified; say -frtti and -fno_rtti (say).
The simplest way for this to work is to define a single bool option "rtti". Then, use custom parsers to translate "frtti" and "fno_rtti" to "rtti=off" and "rtti=on" respectively. See http://boost.org/doc/html/program_options/howto.html#id2715843 which discusses exactly this "no" prefix handling. As a side effect users will be able to specity "--rtti=on", but maybe that's not a big problem.
The other one is that program_options, by default, wants to use double hyphens to define options: "foo --option1 --option2"
I'm a lot more comfortable with single hyphens: "foo -option1 -option2"
Am I missing something basic here?
Yes, I think so. The third parameter of 'parse_command_line' is called style, and possible values are listed at: http://boost.org/doc/html/id2358254.html (not very nicely, but that's Bookbook fault). Say, passing default_style|allow_long_disguise should make program_option check for long option even if you specify a single dash. - Volodya