Arguments bundling

Some command line tools allow bundling of single-character argument names in a form of -abc where a, b and c are separate arguments. argparse supports this through Config.bundling setting and allows the following usages:

import argparse;

struct T
{
    bool a;
    bool b;
    string c;
}

enum Config cfg = { bundling: true };

T t;

assert(CLI!(cfg, T).parseArgs(t, ["-ab"]));
assert(t == T(true, true));

assert(CLI!(cfg, T).parseArgs(t, ["-abc=foo"]));
assert(t == T(true, true, "foo"));

assert(CLI!(cfg, T).parseArgs(t, ["-a","-bc=foo"]));
assert(t == T(true, true, "foo"));

assert(CLI!(cfg, T).parseArgs(t, ["-a","-bcfoo"]));
assert(t == T(true, true, "foo"));

To explain what happens under the hood, let's consider that a command line has -abc entry and there is no abc argument. In this case, argparse tries to parse it as -a bc if there is an a argument and it accepts a value, or as -a -bc if there is an a argument and it does not accept any value. In case if there is no a argument, argparse will error out.

Last modified: 07 August 2024