docopt

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases

Adoption not part of the score

8004 stars · 557 forks observed · 2026-10-12

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

docopt is a command-line argument parsing library that generates a parser from the help message/usage patterns you write in your program's docstring. It has official implementations in Python, Go, and C++, and ports to many other languages.

Use cases

• parse command-line arguments from a docstring
• build a CLI without writing boilerplate parser code
• generate help messages from usage patterns
• define CLI options and positional arguments declaratively
• replace argparse with a help-message-driven parser

When to choose

• you want the CLI interface defined entirely in the help text
• you prefer declarative usage patterns over imperative parser code
• you want consistent parsing across Python, Go, or C++ projects

When to avoid

• you need subcommands with rich per-command help or type validation (argparse/click may fit better)
• you need runtime-generated or dynamic argument definitions
• the project is in maintenance mode and you want actively evolving features

Facets

library · maturity maintenance

parser cli developer-tools developer-tools parsers python go cpp cross-platform argument-parsing docstring-parser cli-framework usage-patterns command-line

Member repositories

For agents

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