If you are building a command-line app and you want to pass multiple values in a single option, there is a built-it support for that in args4j.

The only thing you have to do is to extend org.kohsuke.args4j.spi.DelimitedOptionHandler, passing the delimiter ("," in the example below) and the single-value option handler (IntOptionHandler).

public class MultiIntOptionHandler extends DelimitedOptionHandler<Integer> {
    public MultiIntOptionHandler(CmdLineParser parser, OptionDef option, Setter<? super Integer> setter) {
        super(parser, option, setter, ",", new IntOptionHandler(parser, option, setter));
    }
}

The usage is straightforward:

@Option(name = "-e", aliases = "--elapse", usage = "elapses in", handler = MultiIntOptionHandler.class)
private List<Integer> elapsesIn = new ArrayList<>();