changes to command line parsing

In cleaning up the preproc.c interfaces, I notice that several functions 
are exported solely for the use of nasm.c when it processes command line 
options.  It occurred to me that it might provide a better and more 
concise interface if the interface were made a little more generic, 
since my primary interest in cleaing up the interface is to allow for 
alternate preprocessors to be built.  I thought of several options on 
which I would like your opinions:

OPTION A:
One way to do this would be to give the preprocessor a function which 
nasm.c would call and pass the whole command line (argc, argv).  The 
preproc function would pick out and react to the things that affected 
it, returning the modified command line with the already processed 
arguments removed.  Advantages are that new preprocessors could handle 
different command line arguments, and that the interface is very clean 
and easily understood.  Disadvantages are that command line processing 
would no longer be localized to nasm.c, and that there would be no 
protection against future preprocessor modules overloading existing NASM 
command line parameters.

OPTION B:
Replace the torturous nested switch/case statements in nasm.c with code 
which separates the parsing of command line options from the processing 
of those options.  I have in mind something like popt to parse.  If we 
did it this way, then again, the preprocessor could get first chance at 
parsing the command line but it would use a common function that would 
be within nasm.c (or maybe moved to nasmlib).  Disadvantages are that it 
 still doesn't supply protection against preprocessor modules 
overloading existing NASM command line parameters.  The advantage over 
option A is that the parsing is localized to one place.

OPTION C:
As option B, but instead of calling a function in preproc.c, preproc.c 
would supply only a data structure which describes command line args and 
nasm.c would perhaps append that to its own list and actually do all of 
the parsing on behalf of all other modules.  Advantages over B are that 
now there is protection against overloading parameters.  Disadvantages 
are that the interface between nasm.c and preproc.c is a little larger 
and more complex.

Opinions?

Ed



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