Class ALinearCConsoleApplication

Refers to the command line arguments and options accepted by the program

Refers to the log used for error and diagnostic output by the program

Define the command line options accepted by the program.

This method may be overridden by descendant classes. In the base implementation of ALinearCConsoleApplication, it defines two flag options: one for "help" and one for "version".

Initializer

Destroy the application instance.

This method frees ALinearCConsoleApplication.Options, then calls the inherited routine.

Parse the command line.

This method constructs an instance of AStringStream to represent the command line arguments passed to the program; it then passes that stream to an instance of ALinearCParser, along with the items in ALinearCConsoleApplication.Options, so that the command line can be parsed.

Returns

The value returned by ALinearCParser.parse, which should indicate the number of errors that occurred while parsing.

Execute the application.

This method builds on the behavior inherited from AConsoleApplication.run: after calling the inherited routine, it calls ALinearCConsoleApplication.defineOptions, then ALinearCConsoleApplication.parseCommandLine.

When the command-line arguments have been parsed, this method will check to see whether the "help" or "version" flags have been specified; if so, it calls ALinearCConsoleApplication.printHelpTo or ALinearCConsoleApplication.printVersionTo.

If either ALinearCConsoleApplication.Options or ALinearCConsoleApplication.Log are Nil when this method is entered, meaning that no descendant class has constructed a list of options or a log as part of their initialization, then this method will construct a basic instance of each. The log will output to Self.ErrorOut.

Returns

Zero if execution was successful up to the point defined by this method (descendant classes may perform additional execution afterward), non-zero if an error occurred.

Print usage information for the program to the specified stream.

This method is called automatically by ALinearCConsoleApplication.run, after the command line options have been parsed, if the –help option was specified by the user. The routine first calls Self.usageString to obtain a usage string for the application, which it prints to ThisStream; it then calls ACommandLineOptionsDictionary.printTo on Self.Options.

Print version information for the program to the specified stream.

This method is called automatically by ALinearCConsoleApplication.run, after the command line options have been parsed, if the –version option was specified by the user.

The method uses the key/value pairs specified in Self.VersionInfo to print the name of the program and its version. The format of this output is controlled by lcappVersionStringFormat.

Additional items can be specified in the additionalItems array.

Construct a usage string for the application.

The usage string is printed whenever the user enters an option in error, and is also printed when the user requests help from the command-line.

The usage string includes the executable name and the name of all rest arguments accepted by the application. The format of the string is controlled by lcappUsageStringFormat.

Retrieve a reference to the dictionary of command-line options accepted by the program.

The caller should NOT attempt to free the reference returned by this method; that will be done with the application instance is freed.

Retrieve a reference to the log used for error and diagnostic output by the program.

The caller should NOT attempt to free the reference returned by this method; that will be done when the application instance is freed.