Windows Bat file optional argument parsing

Question

I need my bat file to accept multiple optional named arguments   mycmd bat man1 man2 -username alice -otheroption   For example my command has 2 mandatory parameters  and two optional parameters  -username  that has an argument value of alice  and -otheroption   I d like to be able to pluck these values into variables   Just putting out a call to anyone that has already solved this   Man these bat files are a pain

User · Answer

Here is the arguments parser  You can mix any string arguments  kept untouched  or escaped options  single or option value pairs   To test it uncomment last 2 statements and run as   getargs anystr1 anystr2  test 1  test 2 123  test 3 str anystr3   Escape char is defined as   SEP      redefine if needed    echo off  REM Command line argument parser  Format  both     and  space  separators are supported   REM   anystring1 anystring2  param1  param2 value2  param3 value3       anystring3 anystring4 REM Returns enviroment variables as  REM   param1 1 REM   param2 value2 REM   param3 value3 REM Leading and traling strings are preserved as  1   2   3      9 parameters REM but maximum total number of strings is 9 and max number of leading strings is 8 REM Number of parameters is not limited   set  CNT  1 set  SEP      PARSE  if   CNT    1 set  PARAM1   1  amp  set  PARAM2   2 if   CNT    2 set  PARAM1   2  amp  set  PARAM2   3 if   CNT    3 set  PARAM1   3  amp  set  PARAM2   4 if   CNT    4 set  PARAM1   4  amp  set  PARAM2   5 if   CNT    5 set  PARAM1   5  amp  set  PARAM2   6 if   CNT    6 set  PARAM1   6  amp  set  PARAM2   7 if   CNT    7 set  PARAM1   7  amp  set  PARAM2   8 if   CNT    8 set  PARAM1   8  amp  set  PARAM2   9  if    PARAM2        set  PARAM2  1  if    PARAM1   0 1       SEP        if    PARAM2   0 1       SEP          set   PARAM1   1 -1  1     shift    CNT       else       set   PARAM1   1 -1    PARAM2       shift    CNT       shift    CNT         else     set  a  CNT   1    if  i   CNT   LSS 9 goto  PARSE  set  PARAM1   set  PARAM2   set  CNT    rem getargs anystr1 anystr2  test 1  test 2 123  test 3 str anystr3 rem set   find  test   rem echo  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9   EXIT

User · Answer

The selected answer works  but it could use some improvement    The options should probably be initialized to default values  It would be nice to preserve  0 as well as the required args  1 and  2  It becomes a pain to have an IF block for every option  especially as the number of options grows  It would be nice to have a simple and concise way to quickly define all options and defaults in one place  It would be good to support stand-alone options that serve as flags  no value following the option   We don t know if an arg is enclosed in quotes  Nor do we know if an arg value was passed using escaped characters  Better to access an arg using   1 and enclose the assignment within quotes  Then the batch can rely on the absence of enclosing quotes  but special characters are still generally safe without escaping   This is not bullet proof  but it handles most situations    My solution relies on the creation of an OPTIONS variable that defines all of the options and their defaults  OPTIONS is also used to test whether a supplied option is valid  A tremendous amount of code is saved by simply storing the option values in variables named the same as the option  The amount of code is constant regardless of how many options are defined  only the OPTIONS definition has to change   EDIT - Also  the  loop code must change if the number of mandatory positional arguments changes  For example  often times all arguments are named  in which case you want to parse arguments beginning at position 1 instead of 3  So within the  loop  all 3 become 1  and 4 becomes 2    echo off setlocal enableDelayedExpansion     Define the option names along with default values  using a  lt space gt     delimiter between options  I m using some generic option names  but     normally each option would have a meaningful name        Each option has the format -name  default        The option names are NOT case sensitive        Options that have a default value expect the subsequent command line    argument to contain the value  If the option is not provided then the    option is set to the default  If the default contains spaces  contains    special characters  or starts with a colon  then it should be enclosed    within double quotes  The default can be undefined by specifying the    default as empty quotes        NOTE - defaults cannot contain   or   with this solution        Options that are specified without any default value are simply flags    that are either defined or undefined  All flags start out undefined by    default and become defined if the option is supplied        The order of the definitions is not important     set  options -username   -option2    -option3  three word default  -flag1  -flag2       Set the default option values for   O in   options   do for  f  tokens 1   delims      A in     O   do set    A    B    loop    Validate and store the options  one at a time  using a loop     Options start at arg 3 in this example  Each SHIFT is done starting at    the first option so required args are preserved     if not    3          set  test  options    3        if   test      options          rem No substitution was made so this is an invalid option      rem Error handling goes here      rem I will simply echo an error message      echo Error  Invalid option   3     else if   test  0 1              rem Set the flag option using the option name      rem The value doesn t matter  it just needs to be defined      set    3 1      else       rem Set the option value using the option as the name      rem and the next arg as the value     set    3   4      shift  3       shift  3   goto  loop       Now all supplied options are stored in variables whose names are the    option names  Missing options have the default value  or are undefined if    there is no default     The required args are still available in  1 and  2  and  0 is also preserved     For this example I will simply echo all the option values     assuming any variable starting with - is an option     set -     To get the value of a single parameter  just remember to include the  -  echo The value of -username is   -username    There really isn t that much code  Most of the code above is comments  Here is the exact same code  without the comments    echo off setlocal enableDelayedExpansion  set  options -username   -option2    -option3  three word default  -flag1  -flag2    for   O in   options   do for  f  tokens 1   delims      A in     O   do set    A    B   loop if not    3          set  test  options    3        if   test      options            echo Error  Invalid option   3     else if   test  0 1                set    3 1      else         set    3   4        shift  3       shift  3   goto  loop   set -     To get the value of a single parameter  just remember to include the  -  echo The value of -username is   -username     This solution provides Unix style arguments within a Windows batch  This is not the norm for Windows - batch usually has the options preceding the required arguments and the options are prefixed with     The techniques used in this solution are easily adapted for a Windows style of options    The parsing loop always looks for an option at  1  and it continues until arg 1 does not begin with   Note that SET assignments must be enclosed within quotes if the name begins with    SET  VAR VALUE fails SET   VAR VALUE  works  I am already doing this in my solution anyway  The standard Windows style precludes the possibility of the first required argument value starting with    This limitation can be eliminated by employing an implicitly defined    option that serves as a signal to exit the option parsing loop  Nothing would be stored for the     option        Update 2015-12-28  Support for   in option values  In the code above  each argument is expanded while delayed expansion is enabled  which means that   are most likely stripped  or else something like  var  is expanded  In addition    can also be stripped if   is present  The following small modification to the un-commented code removes the limitation such that   and   are preserved in option values    echo off setlocal enableDelayedExpansion  set  options -username   -option2    -option3  three word default  -flag1  -flag2    for   O in   options   do for  f  tokens 1   delims      A in     O   do set    A    B   loop if not    3          set  test  options    3        if   test      options            echo Error  Invalid option   3     else if   test  0 1                set    3 1      else         setlocal disableDelayedExpansion       set  val   4        call  escapeVal       setlocal enableDelayedExpansion       for  f delims    eol     A in    val    do endlocal amp endlocal amp set    3   A          shift  3       shift  3   goto  loop   goto  endArgs  escapeVal set  val  val        set  val  val        exit  b  endArgs  set -     To get the value of a single parameter  just remember to include the  -  echo The value of -username is   -username

User · Answer

Once I had written a program that handle the short  -h   long  --help  and non-option arguments in batch file  This techniques includes     non-option arguments followed by a option arguments  shift operator for those options that have no argument like  --help   two time shift operator for those options that require an argument  loop through a label for processing all command line arguments  Exit script and stop processing for those options that no need to require further action like  --help   Wrote help functions for user guidiness    Here is my code   set BOARD  set WORKSPACE  set CFLAGS  set LIB INSTALL true set PREFIX lib set PROGRAM install boards   initial  set result false  if   1      -h  set result true  if   1      --help  set result true  if   result       true     goto  usage     if   1      -b  set result true  if   1      --board  set result true  if   result       true     goto  board list     if   1      -n  set result true  if   1      --no-lib  set result true  if   result       true     set LIB INSTALL false  shift  amp  goto  initial     if   1      -c  set result true  if   1      --cflag  set result true  if   result       true     set CFLAGS  2  if not defined CFLAGS    echo  PROGRAM   option requires an argument --  c   goto  try usage     shift  amp  shift  amp  goto  initial     if   1      -p  set result true  if   1      --prefix  set result true  if   result       true     set PREFIX  2  if not defined PREFIX    echo  PROGRAM   option requires an argument --  p   goto  try usage     shift  amp  shift  amp  goto  initial        handle non-option arguments set BOARD  1 set WORKSPACE  2  goto  eof      Help section   usage echo Usage   PROGRAM   OPTIONS     BOARD    WORKSPACE echo Install BOARD to WORKSPACE location  echo WORKSPACE directory doesn t already exist  echo  echo Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too  echo   -h  --help                   display this help and exit echo   -b  --boards                 inquire about available CS3 boards echo   -c  --cflag CFLAGS           making the CS3 BOARD libraries for CFLAGS echo   -p  --prefix PREFIX          install CS3 BOARD libraries in PREFIX echo                                 lib  echo   -n  --no-lib                 don t install CS3 BOARD libraries by default goto  eof   try usage echo Try   PROGRAM  --help  for more information goto  eof

User · Answer

Dynamic variables creation  Pros  Works for  gt 9 arguments Keeps  1   2         in tact Works for both  arg and -arg style No prior knowledge about arguments Implementation is separate from main routine  Cons  Old arguments may leak into consecutive runs  therefore use setlocal for local scoping or write an accompanying  CLEAR-ARGS routine  No alias support yet  like --force to -f  No empty  quot  quot  argument support  Usage Here is an example how the following arguments relate to  bat variables   gt  gt  testargs bat  b 3 -c  d  e  f  g  h  i  j  k  bar 5  foo  quot c   quot   echo              b 3 -c  d  e  f  g  h  i  j  k  bar 5  foo  quot c   quot  echo  ARG FOO    c   echo  ARG A      echo  ARG B      3 echo  ARG C      1 echo  ARG D      1  Implementation  echo off setlocal  CALL  ARG-PARSER       Print examples echo  ALL     echo  FOO   ARG FOO  echo  A     ARG A  echo  B     ARG B  echo  C     ARG C  echo  D     ARG D                                                                   Parse commandline arguments into sane variables    See the following scenario as usage example      gt  gt  thisfile bat  a  b  quot c   quot   c  foo 5     gt  gt  CALL  ARG-PARSER       ARG a 1    ARG b c      ARG c 1    ARG foo 5                                                              ARG-PARSER       Loop until two consecutive empty args      loopargs         IF  quot   1  2 quot  EQU  quot  quot  GOTO  EOF          set  quot arg1   1 quot           set  quot arg2   2 quot          shift            Allow either   or -         set  quot tst1  arg1 -    quot          if  quot  arg1  quot  NEQ  quot  quot                set  quot tst1  tst1  0 1  quot            ELSE               set  quot tst1  quot                     set  quot tst2  arg2 -    quot          if  quot  arg2  quot  NEQ  quot  quot                set  quot tst2  tst2  0 1  quot            ELSE               set  quot tst2  quot                        Capture assignments  eg   foo bar          IF  quot  tst1  quot  EQU  quot   quot   IF  quot  tst2  quot  NEQ  quot   quot  IF  quot  tst2  quot  NEQ  quot  quot                set  quot ARG  arg1  1   arg2  quot              GOTO loopargs                      Capture flags  eg   foo          IF  quot  tst1  quot  EQU  quot   quot                set  quot ARG  arg1  1  1 quot              GOTO loopargs               goto loopargs GOTO  EOF

User · Answer

Though I tend to agree with  AlekDavis  comment  there are nonetheless several ways to do this in the NT shell   The approach I would take advantage of the SHIFT command and IF conditional branching  something like this      ECHO OFF  SET man1  1 SET man2  2 SHIFT  amp  SHIFT   loop IF NOT   1            IF   1    -username            SET user  2         SHIFT           IF   1    -otheroption            SET other  2         SHIFT           SHIFT     GOTO  loop    ECHO Man1    man1  ECHO Man2    man2  ECHO Username    user  ECHO Other option    other   REM    do stuff here      theend

User · Answer

If you want to use optional arguments  but not named arguments  then this approach worked for me   I think this is much easier code to follow   REM Get argument values   If not specified  use default values  IF   1        SET  DatabaseServer localhost    ELSE   SET  DatabaseServer  1    IF   2        SET  DatabaseName MyDatabase    ELSE   SET  DatabaseName  2     REM Do work ECHO Database Server    DatabaseServer  ECHO Database Name      DatabaseName

[batch-file] Windows Bat file optional argument parsing

Examples related to batch-file