Hands-On Microservices with Kubernetes

Command-line flags

Command-line flags or arguments are a staple of programming. When you run your program, you provide arguments that the program uses to configure itself. There are pros and cons of using them:

• Pros:
  • Very flexible
  • Familiar and available in every programming language
  • There are established best practices for short and long options
  • Works well with interactive usage documentation
• Cons:
  • Arguments are always strings
  • Need to quote arguments that contain spaces
  • Difficult to deal with multiline arguments
  • Restrictions on the number of command-line arguments
  • Restrictions on the size of each argument

Command-line arguments are often used for input in addition to configuration. The boundaries between input and configuration can ...