Question

Suppose I have a simple program which takes argument input in one of the following forms

do1 inputLocation outputLocation

do2 inputLocation outputLocation

do3 [30 or 60 or 90] inputLocation outputLocation

do4 [P D or C] inputLocation outputLocation

do5 [G H I] inputLocation outputLocation

I also have 5 functions with the same names in the program that I need to call. So far I thought of doing it this way (In ‘semi pseudocode’)

static void main(String[] args)
{
    if (args.length == 3)
        processTriple(args);
    if (args.length == 4)
        processQuadruple(args);
    throw new UnsupportedOperationException("dasdhklasdha");
}

where the process functions look like this

processDouble(String args[])
{
    String operation = "args[0]";
    Location input = getInput(args[1]);
    Location output = getInput(args[2]);
    if (operation.equals("do1"))
        do1(input,output);
    if (operation.equals("do2"))
        do2(input,output);
    ... etc
}

The way I’m doing it doesn’t seem very extensible. If a function’s arguments change, or new functions are added it seems like this would be a pain to maintain.
What’s the “best” way of going about something like this

Answer 1

at this point I would use commons-cli or jargs. Unless you are trying to do something really special with arguments I would say focus in the real business of your app and don’t deal with the mess of the application arguments