ParserSettings

Customizing the parser

There are some settings with which the parsers behavior can be changed. Here is a list of customizable settings:

• Prefix for options
• Character for assignments
• Boolean switches
• Custom StringParsers

To customizer the parser either use an instance of ParserSettings which you pass to the static Parse() methods or call the Customize(Action<ParserSettings> customizer) instance method of the fluent api.

Prefixes

The prefixes are characters which start an option. To set the characters which may start an option use

  settings.PrefixWith(params char[] prefixes);

At least one character must be passed, and you should make sure its some kind of special character.

The default value is char[] {'/', '-'} .

Assignments

The assignment character is used to separate a passed argument when the user entered something like /name=michael. Change the default with

  settings.AssignWith(params char[] prefixes);

Unlike PrefixWith it is allowed to pass an empty array, which effectively forbids using assignments like this.

The default value is char[] {'=', ':'}

Short boolean assignment

Boolean options can be parsed in many ways. Pass the value as in /bool=true or /bool=false, or even omit the value completely (which negates the default value). Or you can use the short boolean syntax to pass the values /bool+ or /bool-. You can disable the short boolean syntax with

  settings.EnableShortBooleans(false);

By default, the behavior is turned on.

Registering custom string parsers

The ParserSettings instance can be used to add custom string parsers which the parser can use to parse values to custom classes. To add a new string parser you wrote use

  settings.ParseTo<User>().With<UserParser>();
  // or
  settings.ParseTo<User>().With(new UserParser());

By default the StringToObjectParser, the StringToEnumParser and the StringToBoolParser are already added to the instance; see SupportedTypes for their description.