Abseil Flags

By Gennadiy Rozental, Abseil Engineer

Abseil is very happy to announce the release of the Abseil Flags library. Abseil’s flags library provides a standard, readable way to pass command-line values to a program.

#include <iostream>
#include <string>

#include "absl/flags/flag.h"
#include "absl/flags/parse.h"

ABSL_FLAG(std::string, name, "you", "Name of the person to greet");

int main(int argc, char** argv) {
  absl::ParseCommandLine(argc, argv);
  std::cout << "Hello " << absl::GetFlag(FLAGS_name) << "!" << std::endl;
  return 0;
}

$ greet
Hello you!
$ greet --name=Alice
Hello Alice!

Flag variables of the following types are supported out of the box:

• bool
• int32_t
• int64_t
• uint64_t
• double
• std::string
• std::vector<std::string>
• absl::Duration
• absl::Time

For more information, consult the Abseil Flags library documentation.