Popt-1.7 for Windows

An MS-Windows (Win32) port of Popt-1.7 is available from
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net

The popt library exists essentially for parsing commandline options. It is found superior in many ways when compared to parsing the argv array by hand or using the getopt functions getopt() and getopt_long() [see getopt(3)]. Some specific advantages of popt are: it does not utilize global variables, thus enabling multiple passes in parsing argv ; it can parse an arbitrary array of argv-style elements, allowing parsing of command -line-strings from any source; it provides a standard method of option aliasing (to be discussed at length below.); it can exec external option filters; and, finally, it can automatically generate help and usage messages for the application.