Command Line Flags in OpenSCAD

Our program demonstrates how to use command-line flags in OpenSCAD. Here’s the full source code and explanation:

// OpenSCAD doesn't have built-in command-line flag parsing,
// so we'll simulate it using variables and conditional statements.

// Simulating command-line flags
word = "foo";  // default value
numb = 42;     // default value
fork = false;  // default value
svar = "bar";  // default value

// Main module
module main() {
    // Print the values of our simulated flags
    echo("word:", word);
    echo("numb:", numb);
    echo("fork:", fork);
    echo("svar:", svar);
    
    // In OpenSCAD, we can't directly access command-line arguments,
    // so we'll just print a placeholder message for the 'tail'
    echo("tail: [Simulated command-line arguments would go here]");
    
    // Visual representation (optional)
    text(str("Word: ", word));
}

// Call the main module
main();

In OpenSCAD, we don’t have direct access to command-line arguments or a built-in flag parsing system like in some other languages. Instead, we’ve simulated the concept using variables with default values.

To use this script:

1. Save it as command_line_flags.scad.
2. Open it in OpenSCAD.
3. To change the “flag” values, you would modify the variables at the top of the script.

For example, to change the word flag, you would edit the line:

word = "foo";  // default value

to:

word = "opt";  // changed value

When you run the script in OpenSCAD, it will output the values of these variables to the console, simulating the behavior of command-line flags.

Note that OpenSCAD is primarily a 3D modeling scripting language, so it doesn’t have the same command-line execution paradigm as general-purpose programming languages. The echo statements will output to the OpenSCAD console, and the text() function will create a 3D text object with the value of the word variable.

This example demonstrates how you might approach the concept of command-line flags in OpenSCAD, even though the language doesn’t directly support them. In practice, OpenSCAD scripts are typically run within the OpenSCAD environment rather than from the command line.