[SOLVED] Required argument without option name in Commons CLI

Required argument without option name in Commons CLI

I'm trying to parse the command line arguments in Java to the following usage:

Usage: gibl FILE
 -h,  --help      Displays this help message.
 -v,  --version   Displays the program version.
 FILE             Source file.

With the Apache Commons CLI library, I know I can use Option's to parse the -h and -v commands optionally, and then use CommandLine.getArgs() to get the leftover argument FILE and then parse it as I like, but I actually want to specify it as an Option within CLI.

Currently, I do the following:

if (cmd.getArgs().length < 1) {
    System.out.println("Missing argument: FILE");
    help(1); // Prints the help file and closes the program with an exit code of 1.
}
String file = cmd.getArgs()[0];

But then when I call HelpFormatter.printHelp(String, Options) my extra argument does not get included in the automatically generated help text.

What I'm after, is something like this:

Option file = new Option("Source file.");
file.setRequired(true);
options.addOption(file);

Where I have an argument, but no corresponding option identifier attached to it, and can then therefore pass it to the HelpFormatter. Any ideas?

Solution

To the best of my knowledge, Commons CLI does not support defining an option without an associated flag. I think you will need to do something along these lines:

new HelpFormatter().printHelp("commandName [OPTIONS] <FILE>", Options);

In case you didn't see it, this question is pretty similar, and my answer is very similar to the answer there.