A Beginner's Guide to Command Line Arguments in Node.js

 To pass command line arguments to a Node.js program, you can access the process.argv property. Here's how you can do it:

1. Accessing Command Line Arguments: The process.argv property is an array that contains the command line arguments. The first element, process.argv[0], contains the path to the Node.js executable. The second element, process.argv[1], contains the path to the JavaScript file being executed. The subsequent elements contain the command line arguments passed to the program.

2. Parsing Command Line Arguments: If you want to extract meaningful values from the command line arguments, you can use various libraries like yargs or commander. However, if you prefer a simple approach without additional libraries, you can manually parse the arguments from process.argv.

   // Example code to parse command line arguments
   const args = process.argv.slice(2); // Remove first two elements
   
   // Accessing command line arguments
   if (args.length > 0) {
     console.log("Command line arguments:");
     args.forEach((arg, index) => {
       console.log(`Argument ${index + 1}: ${arg}`);
     });
   } else {
     console.log("No command line arguments provided.");
   }

   In the above code, process.argv.slice(2) removes the first two elements, i.e., the paths to the Node.js executable and the JavaScript file. The remaining elements in the args array are the actual command line arguments. You can then process them as needed.

3. Running the Node.js Program: To run the Node.js program with command line arguments, use the node command followed by the JavaScript file and the arguments:

   node your_program.js arg1 arg2 ...
   

   Replace your_program.js with the name of your JavaScript file, and arg1, arg2, etc., with the command line arguments you want to pass.

By following these steps, you should be able to pass command line arguments to your Node.js program and process them accordingly.