Managing Command Line Arguments

Arjan`s World » LINKBLOG for June 28, 2008

Arjan`s World » LINKBLOG for June 28, 2008 — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 23:00:39 GMT

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re: Managing Command Line Arguments

OJ — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 01:01:54 GMT

Hi,

It's definitely worth having a class like this handy for when you need to crank out yet another command-line-driven application. I'd like to make a couple of comments about this class though (from an API/reuse perspective).

* GetSwitch() doesn't actually get the switch. This would probably be better if you named it HasSwitch() or ContainsSwitch() or something similar.

* ParseParam() is another function that could do with a name change. On the surface it'd make much more sense to call it GetSwitchParameter() or something like that. ParseParam() doesn't really indicate that you're extracting the value from a switch parameter - particularly not in a typed fashion.

Naming functions in such a manner which indicates what they're actually doing is very beneficial, particularly if other people are going to be using your code. You might always want to mention that this code requires .NET 3.5.

Thanks for listening. Nice post :)

Cheers

re: Managing Command Line Arguments

hdierking — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 07:52:42 GMT

OJ -

totally agree with "HasSwitch" - that's a much more clear expression of intent.

also agree with the need to rename "ParseParam" - but to avoid potential confusion between params and switches, I would settle more on a name like "GetParamValue"

just one "ctrl+shift+r" -> "Rename" and problem solved :)

thanks!

re: Managing Command Line Arguments

Aaron Murrell — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:44:26 GMT

I have actually seen Robert C. Martin give super presentations on refactoring using the example of a command line parsing framework. Pretty fun to watch him if you ever get the chance. I don't think I've seen his code for it online - but I think yours is at LEAST as good as his :)

re: Managing Command Line Arguments

Aaron Murrell — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:45:35 GMT

hah! found it... Good stuff:

http://www.objectmentor.com/resources/articles/Clean_Code_Args.pdf