Opts

Opts is a common shorthand for options, especially in computing contexts such as software configuration and command-line interfaces. In general, an option is a parameter that can modify program behavior, toggle features, or supply input values. The term appears in documentation, code, and scripts as a convenient label for a collection of settings.

In command-line interfaces, options are often referred to as flags or switches. They can be short forms (for example -h) or long forms (for example --help). Options may be boolean, requiring no value, or they may take an argument, such as a port number or a file path. Command-line option parsing is typically handled by a library or framework, which also supports help text, required versus optional options, default values, and type conversion. Positional arguments, which are inputs without explicit option names, are usually separate from options.

In programming, options are frequently gathered into a single data structure named opts, options, or similar. After parsing, opts contains the values provided by the user or configuration source. Accessing a field like opts.port or opts.verbose lets the program adapt its behavior at run time. This pattern helps separate input handling from core logic and makes defaults and validations easier to manage.

Many languages provide dedicated libraries for option parsing, such as Python’s argparse, Ruby’s OptionParser, and Node.js libraries like yargs or commander. While the syntax and features vary, the underlying idea remains the same: opts represent the set of configurable parameters that control how a program operates.