NDesk.Options ============= NDesk.Options is a program option parser for C#. See: http://www.ndesk.org/Options Overview: -------- It takes advantage of C# 3.0 features such as collection initializers and lambda delegates to provide a short, concise specification of the option names to parse, whether or not those options support values, and what to do when the option is encountered. It's entirely callback based: var verbose = 0; var show_help = false; var names = new List<string> (); var p = new OptionSet () { { "v|verbose", v => { if (v != null) ++verbose; } }, { "h|?|help", v => { show_help = v != null; } }, { "n|name=", v => { names.Add (v); } }, }; However, C# 3.0 features are not required, and can be used with C# 2.0: int verbose = 0; bool show_help = false; List<string> names = new List<string> (); OptionSet p = new OptionSet () .Add ("v|verbose", delegate (string v) { if (v != null) ++verbose; }) .Add ("h|?|help", delegate (string v) { show_help = v != null; }) .Add ("n|name=", delegate (string v) { names.Add (v); }); Distribution: ------------ In accordance with the Guidelines for Application Deployment [0], there are pkg-config files to permit simple access to the source or pre-compiled assemblies for re-use. There are two ways to use NDesk.Options: - Bundle src/NDesk.Options/NDesk.Options/Options.cs with your app. pkg-config --variable=Sources ndesk-options - Use a prebuilt NDesk.Options.dll: pkg-config --variable=Libraries ndesk-options [0] http://www.mono-project.com/Guidelines:Application_Deployment#Libraries_with_Unstable_APIs