Project link: https://codeberg.org/jeffective/cli
Hello everyone, I’ve repackaged my std.cli attempt (command line argument parser) as a module. The ethos behind the design is explained in detail in the PR, but the short version is that it is an attempt at being the opposite of “type-driven” while retaining the same direct access to parsed fields. This means the parse function can be understood first from the types of its arguments, instead of its docs.
So the following cli definition:
pub const command: cli.Command = .{
.name = .cowsay,
.positional_args = &.{
.init(.message, [:0]const u8, .{ .help = "Message said by the cow." }),
},
.named_args = &.{
.init(.red, bool, .{ .help = "Change text color to red.", .default_value = false }),
},
.help = "Make a cow speak.\n",
};
can use the parse result like this:
const parsed = try cli.parse(
command,
try init.minimal.args.toSlice(init.arena.allocator()),
.{
.exit_usage_error = true,
.render_usage_errors = true,
.exit_help = true,
.render_help = .{ .generated = io },
},
);
...
if (parsed.kind.args.red) {
try out.writeAll("\x1b[31m");
}
...
try out.print("{s}", .{parsed.kind.args.message});
Unfortunately there is a lot of comptime in there, so ZLS won’t be able to provide autocomplete until the compiler server comes, but I really like working directly with the types like this, already parsed for me (like std.json).
Supported Zig versions
- 0.17.0
- 0.16.0
