minimist

What is minimist?

The minimist package is a command-line argument parser that helps to convert argument strings into a structured format. It is designed to be minimalist and simple to use, focusing on parsing the options passed to a Node.js script.

What are minimist's main functionalities?

Parse command-line arguments

This feature allows you to parse command-line arguments. The process.argv array is sliced to remove the first two elements (node and script path), and the remaining elements are parsed by minimist to create an object with the arguments.

const minimist = require('minimist');
const args = minimist(process.argv.slice(2));
console.log(args);

Custom argument parsing

This feature allows for custom parsing options such as specifying which arguments should be treated as strings or booleans, and setting aliases for argument names.

const minimist = require('minimist');
const args = minimist(process.argv.slice(2), {
  string: ['lang'],
  boolean: ['version'],
  alias: { v: 'version' }
});
console.log(args);

Default argument values

This feature allows you to provide default values for arguments that are not supplied on the command line.

const minimist = require('minimist');
const args = minimist(process.argv.slice(2), {
  default: { lang: 'en', debug: false }
});
console.log(args);

Other packages similar to minimist

yargs

Yargs is a more feature-rich command-line argument parser. It provides a fluent interface for building complex argument parsing logic and includes features like command handling, help text generation, and more.

commander

Commander is another popular npm package for parsing command-line arguments. It is more oriented towards building command-line applications with sub-commands and action handlers.

arg

Arg is a simple argument parser with a focus on performance and small package size. It is similar to minimist but offers a different API and type-based parsing.

meow

Meow is a wrapper around minimist that provides a higher-level interface for creating CLIs. It includes features like help text generation and input validation.

README

minimist

parse argument options

This module is the guts of optimist's argument parser without all the fanciful decoration.

example

var argv = require('minimist')(process.argv.slice(2));
console.dir(argv);

$ node example/parse.js -a beep -b boop
{ _: [], a: 'beep', b: 'boop' }

$ node example/parse.js -x 3 -y 4 -n5 -abc --beep=boop foo bar baz
{ _: [ 'foo', 'bar', 'baz' ],
  x: 3,
  y: 4,
  n: 5,
  a: true,
  b: true,
  c: true,
  beep: 'boop' }

methods

var parseArgs = require('minimist')

var argv = parseArgs(args, opts={})

Return an argument object argv populated with the array arguments from args.

argv._ contains all the arguments that didn't have an option associated with them.

Numeric-looking arguments will be returned as numbers unless opts.string or opts.boolean is set for that argument name.

Any arguments after '--' will not be parsed and will end up in argv._.

options can be:

• opts.string - a string or array of strings argument names to always treat as strings
• opts.boolean - a boolean, string or array of strings to always treat as booleans. if true will treat all double hyphenated arguments without equal signs as boolean (e.g. affects --foo, not -f or --foo=bar)
• opts.alias - an object mapping string names to strings or arrays of string argument names to use as aliases
• opts.default - an object mapping string argument names to default values
• opts.stopEarly - when true, populate argv._ with everything after the first non-option
• opts['--'] - when true, populate argv._ with everything before the -- and argv['--'] with everything after the --. Here's an example:
• opts.unknown - a function which is invoked with a command line parameter not defined in the opts configuration object. If the function returns false, the unknown option is not added to argv.

> require('./')('one two three -- four five --six'.split(' '), { '--': true })
{ _: [ 'one', 'two', 'three' ],
  '--': [ 'four', 'five', '--six' ] }

Note that with opts['--'] set, parsing for arguments still stops after the --.

install

With npm do:

npm install minimist

license

MIT

Changelog

v1.1.0 - 2014-08-10

Commits

• add support for handling "unknown" options not registered with the parser. 6f3cc5d
• reformat package.json 02ed371
• coverage script e5531ba
• extra fn to get 100% coverage again a6972da