Hi Jody,
I think it is unreasonable to expect all command lines to be specified in this way. If --something expects an argument, then 10 is that argument.
Well, I obvious don't know if an unknown option expects an argument ;-)
Right, but the custom parser better.
Ok, so you'd like to call your existing parser from inside custom parser that program_options provide? That would indeed solve some of the problems.
It should hold state and know what is supposed to come next. However, it can only do this if the custom parser is allowed to eat up the option, leaving the "driver" with nothing to do at all for that option (like a Jedi mind trick, "This is not the option you are looking for.")
I agree. I already plan that a future version will allow custom parser to return a vector of options, so you can return 0, 1, or many options, while eating as many tokens as you like. I'm afraid I don't know when it will be implemented. "This year" is as accurate estimate as I can provide. - Volodya