"The GNU tool gperf is a 'perfect' hash function that, for a given set of user-provided strings, generates C/C++ code for a hash table, a hash function, and a lookup function. Learn how to use gperf for effective command-line processing in your C/C++ code.
"Command-line processing is historically one of the most ignored areas in software development. Just about any relatively complicated software has dozens of available command-line options. In fact, it's not uncommon to find hundreds of lines of if-else statements coded to process user input, and maintenance of such legacy code becomes a time-consuming affair even for seasoned programmers. In such circumstances, most C developers commonly go for a rather long (and often nested) if-else statement with ANSI C library functions such as strcmp, strcasecmp, and strtok thrown in for good measure..."
