minimist-lite
parse argument options
This module is the guts of optimist's argument parser without all the fanciful decoration.
This repo is to keep the seemingly abandoned minimist package alive and up to date.
All credits go to James Halliday
Installation
With npm do:
npm install minimist-lite
With yarn do:
yarn add minimist-lite
License
MIT License. See LICENSE for details.
Examples
See example/parse.js:
var argv = require('minimist-lite')(process.argv.slice(2));
console.log(argv);
Running node example/parse.js
with arguments shows how they are parsed
by minimist:
No arguments
With no arguments minimist returns an object with a single key "_" (underscore) with a value of an empty array:
$ node example/parse.js
{ _: [] }
Arguments without dashes
Using arguments with no dashes adds them to the "_" array in the object returned by minimist:
$ node example/parse.js abc def
{ _: [ 'abc', 'def' ] }
Single-letter options
A single dash starts a single-letter option that are boolean by default:
$ node example/parse.js -a -b -c
{ _: [], a: true, b: true, c: true }
Single-letter options can be joined together:
$ node example/parse.js -abc
{ _: [], a: true, b: true, c: true }
When a single-letter option is followed by a value with no dashes, the option gets that value in the returned object instead of a boolean value:
$ node example/parse.js -a beep -b boop
{ _: [], a: 'beep', b: 'boop' }
Numeric values can be joined with single-letter options:
$ node example/parse.js -a 1 -b2
{ _: [], a: 1, b: 2 }
Multi-letter options
Multi-letter options start with double dashes and they are boolean by default:
$ node example/parse.js --abc --def
{ _: [], abc: true, def: true }
Values can follow multi-letter options after a space or equal sign:
$ node example/parse.js --abc 1 --def=2
{ _: [], abc: 1, def: 2 }
--no-
prefix handling
Options with the prefix --no-
will be treated as a flag that has the value false
by default:
$ node example/parse.js --no-abc
{ _: [], abc: false }
$ node example/parse.js --no-abc true
{ _: ['true'], abc: false }
Mixed styles
All of those styles can be used together:
$ node example/parse.js -x 3 -y 4 -n5 -abc --beep=boop --hoo:haa foo bar baz
{ _: [ 'foo', 'bar', 'baz' ],
x: 3,
y: 4,
n: 5,
a: true,
b: true,
c: true,
hoo: [haa],
beep: 'boop' }
The default parsing of the arguments can be changed by using the second argument to the parsing method, see below.
Repeated options
If an option is provided more than once, the returned object value for that option will be an array (rather than a boolean or a string):
$ node example/parse.js --foo=bar --foo=baz
{ _: [], foo: [ 'bar', 'baz' ] }
Methods
Minimist exports a single method:
var parseArgs = require('minimist-lite');
var argv = parseArgs(args, opts={})
Return an argument object argv
populated with the array arguments from args
.
argv._
contains all the arguments that didn't have an option associated with
them, or an empty array if there were no such arguments.
Numeric-looking arguments will be returned as numbers unless opts.string
or
opts.boolean
is set for that argument name.
Any arguments after '--'
will not be parsed and will end up in argv._
.
Options
options can be:
-
opts.string
- a string or array of strings with argument names to always treat as strings -
opts.array
- a string or array of strings argument names to always treat as array values -
opts.boolean
- a boolean, string or array of strings to always treat as booleans. iftrue
will treat all double hyphenated arguments without equal signs as boolean (e.g. affects--foo
, not-f
or--foo=bar
) -
opts.alias
- an object mapping string names to strings or arrays of string argument names to use as aliases -
opts.default
- an object mapping string argument names to default values -
opts.stopEarly
- when true, populateargv._
with everything after the first non-option -
opts['--']
- when true, populateargv._
with everything before the--
andargv['--']
with everything after the--
. Here's an example:> require('./')('one two three -- four five --six'.split(' '), { '--': true }) { _: [ 'one', 'two', 'three' ], '--': [ 'four', 'five', '--six' ] }
Note that with
opts['--']
set, parsing for arguments still stops after the--
. -
opts.unknown
- a function which is invoked with a command line parameter not defined in theopts
configuration object. If the function returnsfalse
, the unknown option is not added toargv
.