Basics for writing a command-line tool in Go

Go provides a basic library called flag. It refers to the command-line flags. Since it is already packed with the Go distribution, there is no need to install anything externally. We can see the absolute basics of writing the command-line tool. The flag package has multiple functions, such as Int and String, to handle the input given as command-line flags. Suppose we need to take a name from the user and print it back to the console. We use the flag.String method, as shown in the following code snippet:

import "flag"
var name = flag.String("name", "No Namer", "your wonderful name")

Let us write a short program for clear details. Create a file called flagExample.go in your $GOPATH/src/github.com/narenaryan and add the following content:

package main

import (
  "flag"
  "log"
  )

var name = flag.String("name", "stranger", "your wonderful name")

func main(){
  flag.Parse()
  log.Printf("Hello %s, Welcome to the command line world", *name)
}

In this...