How to manage short options with Apache Commons CLI API?

A short option is a single character option prefixed with "-". For example, "-h" is a short option.

A short option can be managed with Apache Commons CLI API in 4 steps:

1. Define Options - A short option can be defined and added to the options collection by calling the addOption() method with 2 arguments. For example:

import org.apache.commons.cli.Options;
      Options options = new Options();
      options.addOption("h", "Print this help message");

2. Parse Options - A short option can be parsed together with all other options in a single call of CommandLineParser.parse(). For example:

import org.apache.commons.cli.CommandLineParser;
import org.apache.commons.cli.CommandLine;
import org.apache.commons.cli.DefaultParser;
         CommandLineParser parser = new DefaultParser();
         CommandLine cmd = parser.parse( options, args);

3. Process Options - A short option can be processed by calling the CommandLine.hasOption() method. For example:

         if (cmd.hasOption("h")) {
            help(options);
         }

4. Print Options - A short optoin can be printed out as help message together with all other options. For example:

import org.apache.commons.cli.HelpFormatter;
      HelpFormatter formatter = new HelpFormatter();
      formatter.printHelp("ShortOptionTest", options);

⇒ Commons CLI API - Short Options Example

⇐ Using commons-cli.jar in Java Programs

⇑ Using commons-cli.jar in Java Programs

⇑⇑ FAQ for Apache Commons CLI JAR Library