Regarding '+' and ',' characters issues, why not just use ':' for everything and dissect the parameters in the code instead? I mean, for example:
Code:
xtool -mzlib:c32mb:reflate:l9
^This is perfectly easy to scan because names like zlib, kraken, reflate etc are unique and cannot appear as codec flags. So in your code you would just look for a word that represent a codec in the list and then all other params would be flags until next codec name is detected. So for example:
Code:
-mzlib:kraken:{param}
program would still know that zlib is with default parameters and kraken with whatever you put behind it simply because it knows about reserved words.
Also regarding versioning, whats wrong with simple v1.032, v1.033, v1.034 or anything like that?
Just a suggestions of course, I don't want to feel ungrateful or anything.