<dependency> <groupId>commons-cli</groupId> <artifactId>commons-cli</artifactId> <version>1.4</version> </dependency> Options options = new Options(); CommandLineParser parser = new DefaultParser(); try { CommandLine cmd = parser.parse(options, args); if (cmd.hasOption("a")) { } if (cmd.hasOption("f")) { String filename = cmd.getOptionValue("f"); } String[] otherArgs = cmd.getArgs(); // ... } catch (ParseException e) { } HelpFormatter formatter = new HelpFormatter();