Stop writing CLI validation. Parse it right the first time

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.

Almost every command line tool has runtime dependencies that must be installed on your system.

    $ ldd /usr/bin/rg
    linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007fff45dd7000)
    libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x000070764e7b1000)
    libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x000070764e6ca000)
    libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x000070764de00000)
    /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x000070764e7e6000)

The worst is compiling a C program with a compiler that uses a more recent libc than is installed on the installation host.

Don't let your dreams be dreams

  $ wget 'https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/releases/download/14.1.1/ripgrep-14.1.1-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz'
  $ tar -xvf 'ripgrep-14.1.1-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz'
  $ ldd ripgrep-14.1.1-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/rg
  ldd (0x7f1dcb927000)
  $ file ripgrep-14.1.1-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/rg
  ripgrep-14.1.1-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/rg: ELF 64-bit LSB pie executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), static-pie linked, stripped

Which only works on linux. No other OS allows static binaries, you always need to link to libc for syscalls.

try cosmopolitan!