Actually, I think you can setup through the mostly undocumented style_t enumeration for using a "/" but it is not automatic as I recall. See cmdline.hpp for the style_t definition. It also took a little looking to figure out how to set style_t. I did it once a couple of years ago and I forget offhand how I did it but could find it if needed. Larry ----- Original Message ----- From: Ovanes Markarian To: boost-users@lists.boost.org Sent: Monday, December 07, 2009 10:33 AM Subject: Re: [Boost-users] program_options James, Hicham's point was to generate OS system dependent short long options notations. Like --help or -h on Posix and /help or /h on Windows. AFAIK, program options does not provide this feature. With Kind Regards, Ovanes On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 4:24 PM, James C. Sutherland wrote: Try the syntax: desc.add_options() ( "help", "print help message\n" ) ( "Long-Option-Name,o", ...); and then you have: --Long-Option-Name or -o as valid usages. On Dec 7, 2009, at 8:10 AM, Hicham Mouline wrote: > For command-line options, I understand from what I read so far that the > options should be like > --option_name=value > > There is a system(I believe it is gnu) which has the long and short versions > of options, like > -h and --help > Also, on winxxx systems, usually the command line options are indicated with > a / like /? or /x /X .... > > Is it possible to tune program_options to choose the platform's default way > of treating options? > > Regards, > > _______________________________________________ > Boost-users mailing list > Boost-users@lists.boost.org > http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost-users _______________________________________________ Boost-users mailing list Boost-users@lists.boost.org http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Boost-users mailing list Boost-users@lists.boost.org http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost-users

OvermindDL1 wrote:

On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 9:37 AM, Larry wrote:

...

Actually, I think you can setup through the mostly undocumented style_t enumeration for using a "/" but it is not automatic as I recall. See cmdline.hpp for the style_t definition. It also took a little looking to figure out how to set style_t. I did it once a couple of years ago and I forget offhand how I did it but could find it if needed.

That is something I do like about the windows format using / instead of -. I have used a few windows command-line apps that use / to specify options, - to remove something, and + to add something. Makes more sense to me over all; would be nice to have program_options support that style as well.

Example: someapp /input=file.tst -optimize +abc Means: the input is file.tst, you disable optimizations, and you enable automatic bounds checking or whatever...

FWIW, this +something -whatever convention is similar to -fno-something/-fsomething convention such as used, e.g., by gcc. One can use a custom parser to support either, I think there's example of the latter style. - Volodya