args-tokenizer is a lightweight JavaScript library for parsing shell commands with arguments into an argv array. This makes it easy to work with command-line tools and libraries that expect an array format for arguments, such as tinyexec.
- Simple and intuitive API.
- Handles quoted strings and escapes correctly.
- Supports multiline input.
- Ideal for parsing human-readable shell commands, especially
curl-style commands.
Made at Webstudio, open source website builder.
Install args-tokenizer:
npm install args-tokenizerHere's how you can use args-tokenizer to parse shell commands:
import { tokenizeArgs } from "args-tokenizer";
const args = tokenizeArgs(`ls -la "./src"`);
console.log(args); // ["ls", "-la", "./src"]args-tokenizer also supports multiline commands, such as:
const args = tokenizeArgs(`
curl \\
-X POST \\
"https://my-url.com"
`);
console.log(args); // ["curl", "-X", "POST", "https://my-url.com"]One common use case is passing more human-readable commands into the tinyexec library:
import { tokenizeArgs } from "args-tokenizer";
import { x } from "tinyexec";
const [command, ...args] = tokenizeArgs("ls -la");
const result = await x(command, args);
console.log(result.stdout);Parses a shell command string into an array of arguments. Properly handles:
- Quoted strings (e.g.,
'"./path/to/file"'). - Escaped characters (e.g.,
\"). - Multiline commands (e.g., lines ending with
\\).
loose: Iftrue, the tokenizer will not throw an error when closing quotes are missing. Default isfalse.
// Without loose option (default behavior)
// This will throw an error due to the missing closing quote
tokenizeArgs('command "arg1 arg2');
// With loose option enabled
const args = tokenizeArgs('command "arg1 arg2', { loose: true });
// ['command', 'arg1 arg2']This project is licensed under the MIT License.
Contributions are welcome! Feel free to open issues or submit pull requests to improve the library.