structopt

Yes, that's std::env::args[0], however a higher level wrapper (I prefer structopt[1]) makes it trivial to produce nice usage output etc. [0] https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/env/fn.args.html [1] https://github.com/TeXitoi/structopt

Is 'structopt' a common name for this type of argument parser library? I thought it started with the Rust library of the same name but no one has mentioned it yet... In my opinion, it is _the_ way to quickly create a quality CLI. https://github.com/TeXitoi/structopt

I disagree that Python has better ergonomics than Rust for scripts like this. For example, IMO python doesn't have anything as nice as Rust's structopt library for argument parsing (https://github.com/TeXitoi/structopt). Python does have package management, but it's a pain to use compared to Rust or JavaScript (have to setup virtual envs, etc - not very ergonomic!). You also mostly don't hit into the tricky ownership issues that can make Rust less ergonomic in CLI apps. Because the code flow is usually quite linear, so you don't have multiple bits of code trying to access the same variables at once. Note: Although Rust has static types, it has very good type inference such that you don't often have to explicitly state the types. IMO this brings Rust pretty close to dynamic language ergonomics for simple things like this.

Personally, I like Rust's a bit better: https://github.com/TeXitoi/structopt edit: because it's type safe!

To build on Rust's options, there's the Structopt library[0] that generates a CLI interface using clap-rs from an annotated struct, which is a very, very nice experience for making command line tools. [0]https://github.com/TeXitoi/structopt