Command line option parsing for Standard ML

This is an SML library for parsing command line options, in the style of getopt. It is designed to make it possible to fully follow modern command line option conventions, as described in the GNU Standards for Command Line Interfaces. At the same time, it is rather flexible in how to interpret the provided options. This flexibility does make it a little cumbersome in some cases (see examples below), but your users will likely appreciate the consistency with other programs.

While the library is currently supplied only with MLB files, the code should work in any compliant SML compiler. CM files welcome!

The implementation is based on a Haskell library by Sven Panne.

Overview of MLB files

• lib/github.com/diku-dk/sml-getopt/getopt.mlb

  • signature GETOPT
  • structure GetOpt :> GETOPT

Use of the package

This library is set up to work well with the SML package manager smlpkg. To use the package, in the root of your project directory, execute the command:

$ smlpkg add github.com/diku-dk/sml-getopt

This command will add a requirement (a line) to the sml.pkg file in your project directory (and create the file, if there is no file sml.pkg already).

To download the library into the directory lib/github.com/diku-dk/sml-getopt, execute the command:

$ smlpkg sync

You can now reference the mlb-file using relative paths from within your project's mlb-files.

Notice that you can choose either to treat the downloaded package as part of your own project sources (vendoring) or you can add the sml.pkg file to your project sources and make the smlpkg sync command part of your build process.

Examples

See here