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Stop writing CLI validation. Parse it right the first time

(hackers.pub)
203 points dahlia | 1 comments | 06 Sep 25 18:20 UTC | HN request time: 0.199s | source
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bschwindHN ◴[07 Sep 25 09:25 UTC] No.45156696[source]▶
Rust with Clap solved this forever ago.

Also - don't write CLI programs in languages that don't compile to native binaries. I don't want to have to drag around your runtime just to execute a command line tool.

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1. dcminter ◴[07 Sep 25 09:45 UTC] No.45156785[source]▶
The declarative form of clap is not quite as well documented as the programmatic approach (but it's not too bad to figure out usually).

One of the things I love about clap is that you can configure it to automatically spit out --help info, and you can even get it to generate shell autocompletions for you!

I think there are some other libraries that are challenging it now (fewer dependencies or something?) but clap sets the standard to beat.