clap: Handling of ambiguous long options

[GunterSchmidt]

I am sure, this must have come up before, but could not find a discussion on it.

When using abbreviated long options, sometimes the option is not unique, e.g.

$ ls --h
ls: option '--h' is ambiguous; possibilities: '--human-readable' '--hide-control-chars' '--hide' '--hyperlink' '--help'

But clap returns just an error with a single suggestion:

error: unexpected argument '--h' found

tip: a similar argument exists: '--hide'

Usage: ls [OPTION]... [FILE]...

This is less information to the user, who has now to call --help first, if he does not remember the exact option.

Use case: User wants to hide control characters, but only remembers "something with --hide",
so he types "ls --hid" and should get
ls: option '--hi' is ambiguous; possibilities: '--hide-control-chars' '--hide'.
He then can just simply repeat the command (cursor up) and add a few letters: "ls --hide-c".

With uutils this is not possible.

clap should return a list of possible options instead of the first suggested one, but does not support that functionality.

Below is a code change that would output something like:

Error: Argument '--h' is ambiguous.
Did you mean one of these?
  --help
  --hide
  --hide-control-chars
  --human-readable
  --hyperlink 

What is your take on that?

pub fn handle_clap_result_with_exit_code<I, T>(
    mut cmd: Command,
    itr: I,
    exit_code: i32,
) -> UResult<ArgMatches>
where
    I: IntoIterator<Item = T>,
    T: Into<OsString> + Clone,
{
    // cloning args for double use in error case
    let args = itr.into_iter().collect::<Vec<T>>();
    let itr = args.clone();
    // using mut to avoid cloning cmd
    cmd.try_get_matches_from_mut(itr).map_err(|e| {
        if e.exit_code() == 0 {
            e.into() // Preserve help/version
        } else {
            // find ambiguous options
            if e.kind() == ErrorKind::UnknownArgument || e.kind() == ErrorKind::InvalidSubcommand {
                // Find the string the user actually typed (e.g., "--de")
                // for arg in &itr {}
                let args_str: Vec<String> = args
                    .into_iter()
                    .map(|t| {
                        let o: OsString = t.into();
                        o.to_string_lossy().to_string()
                    })
                    .collect();
                if let Some(provided) = args_str.iter().find(|a| a.starts_with("--")) {
                    let search_term = provided.trim_start_matches("--");

                    // Manually filter all defined long arguments
                    let mut matches: Vec<_> = cmd
                        .get_arguments()
                        .filter_map(|arg| arg.get_long())
                        .filter(|l| l.starts_with(search_term))
                        .collect();

                    if matches.len() > 1 {
                        // TODO error handling to UError
                        eprintln!("Error: Argument '{}' is ambiguous.", provided);
                        eprintln!("Did you mean one of these?");
                        matches.sort();
                        for m in matches {
                            eprintln!("  --{}", m);
                        }
                        std::process::exit(1);
                    }
                }
            }

            let formatter = ErrorFormatter::new(crate::util_name());
            let code = formatter.print_error(&e, exit_code);
            USimpleError::new(code, "")
        }
    })
}

[oech3]

Just removing suggestion? We provide completion already.

[GunterSchmidt]

Of course, that is not going to change. This only triggers in case the completion cannot be done, as clap does not find a unique option. It is build into the error case.
.