That's great to hear, Sage. My initial thrust here was to just get the syntax in place so that it worked the way it should, and I didn't give a lot of attention to the supporting implementation beyond that it should work correctly. I definitely see a possibility for big changes there and maybe even an intermediary layer between cli and racket/cmdline which could be natural-cli or something resembling it. I made some notes regarding the existing implementation and possible next steps in this issue <https://github.com/countvajhula/cli/issues/5>. Happy to discuss further and I appreciate your offer to collaborate.
On Sat, Jul 24, 2021 at 10:47 AM Sage Gerard <s...@sagegerard.com> wrote: > Thank you for doing this. CLIs are an interesting beast, and I should be > available to contribute and/or comment next week. > > > *~slg* > > > > > > > -------- Original Message -------- > On Jul 24, 2021, 1:14 PM, Siddhartha Kasivajhula < skasi...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > Hello folks, > If you ever have a need to write a command line script in Racket, you may > be interested in the package I've just put up. Normally you'd write such > scripts using Racket's built-in command-line > <https://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/Command-Line_Parsing.html#%28form._%28%28lib._racket%2Fcmdline..rkt%29._command-line%29%29> > or > parse-command-line > <https://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/Command-Line_Parsing.html#%28def._%28%28lib._racket%2Fcmdline..rkt%29._parse-command-line%29%29> > form. > These offer a lot of functionality, but it takes time to learn how they > work and the syntax is somewhat idiosyncratic. So, I've written a #lang > that allows you to achieve the same functionality but with more familiar > and extensible syntax, #lang cli > <https://docs.racket-lang.org/cli/index.html>. > > The language is composed of 5 forms - help, flag, constraint, program, > and run. With these 5 forms, you get all of the functionality of the > built-in parse-command-line form, and with syntax that's much simpler. In > fact, the nontrivial forms of the language simply use Racket's normal > function definition syntax, so there's very little to learn -- you > basically write normal functions and they are implicitly wired to accept > their inputs via the command line. > > At the moment, the functionality offered is at parity with the built-in > forms, but there are some planned additions that would make it more > powerful, including composable commands > <https://github.com/countvajhula/cli/issues/3>, generalized constraints > <https://github.com/countvajhula/cli/issues/6>, and argument schemas > <https://github.com/countvajhula/cli/issues/7>. > > So if you write command line scripts, I encourage you to give it a try. > > I also coincidentally came across the package natural-cli > <https://docs.racket-lang.org/natural-cli/index.html> by Sage Gerard. > Looks like it provides some interesting features and in particular > subcommands, which are absent in #lang cli. It very well may be that this > package should be leveraged for semantics in #lang cli in the future (Sage > if you'd like to add anything about what this package offers, please do). > > Enjoy, > -Sid > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Racket Users" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/CACQBWFnevJaRg61xLv6ayps-ihGpuUFUFEVbLTH7m929tpex3Q%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/CACQBWFnevJaRg61xLv6ayps-ihGpuUFUFEVbLTH7m929tpex3Q%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Racket Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/CACQBWF%3D9bQpNpc2ShAcARtuz0y7%3DvHuiyiU17eafx5DZ%3D6DKzA%40mail.gmail.com.
