Two weeks ago, I released the library ExecOptions.Net on CodePlex.

ExecOptions.Net is a library providing an easy handling of console application arguments.

Every developer will have to deal a day or an other with Console arguments, like checking a file existence, some string patterns matching (I hope that there is not only GUI developers :>> ).
And because writing such a code it is really boring I developed this library.

Currently there is a minimal set of features:

• Defining an options as mandatory or optional
• Checking file existence
• Validating an XML file against its XML schema
• Defining regular expression matching

A cool feature is the possibility to define your options as .Net attributes (like Mono.Options.dll ). The code should be something like that

[OptionDelimiter('-')]
internal class TestOption
{
    private bool m_Usage;
    [Option("h",
            OptionCategory.Optional,
            "print program usage"
            OptionType.Usage)]
    public bool Usage
    {
        get { return m_Usage; }
        set { m_Usage = value; }
    }
    private bool m_Verbose;
    [Option("v", 
            OptionCategory.Optional,
            OptionType.Empty,
            "activate verbose mode")]
    public bool Verbose
    {
        get { return m_Verbose; }
        set { m_Verbose = value; }
    }
    private String m_XmlFile;
    [Option("input", 
            OptionCategory.Optional, 
            OptionType.Xml, 
            "input file", 
            "..\\..\\test.u\\schema.xsd")]
    public String XmlFile
    {
        get { return m_XmlFile; }
        set { m_XmlFile = value; }
    }
    private String m_RegEx;
    [Option("pattern", 
            OptionCategory.Mandatoy, 
            OptionType.RegEx, 
            "regular ex", "[a-z]{0,}")]
    public String RegEx
    {
        get { return m_RegEx; }
        set { m_RegEx = value; }
    }    
}

Your application Main will be really simple.

class Program
{
    [STAThread]
    static int Main(string[] args)
    {
        OptionManager mgr = new OptionManager();
        TestOption opt = new TestOption();
        mgr.ProcessArgs<TestOption>(args, opt);
        if(opt.Usage)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(mgr.Usage());
            return 0;
        }
        /* Your Business Code */
    }
}

I hope that such a library can help you.

Feedbacks ,bugs or features are welcomed !