Subcommand gets parsed as option

[martinpaljak]

I'm building something that will execute commands dynamically, basically an app launcher that resolves app names during runtime. The command itself also has a set of options.

I have

@Option(names = {"-r", "--reader"}, arity = "0..1", description = "Use reader", paramLabel = "<reader>", fallbackValue = "")
    String reader;
 @Parameters
    String[] params = {};

and

 @Command(name = "run", description = "Run specified application.")
    public int runApp(@Parameters(paramLabel = "<app>", index = "0") String app, @Parameters(index = "1..*") String[] args) {

Also, I'd like the "run" subcommand be the default, so when I type "mycmd app arg1 arg2" the above would be triggered from the generic call():

// Default is to run apps
        if (params.length > 0 && weHaveApp(params[0])) {
            return runApp(params[0], Arrays.copyOfRange(params, 1, params.length));
        }

I'd like to use "mycmd -r run app arg1 arg2 --something" to run app with arg1 and arg2 and --something as well as with the fallback value assigned to reader (the logic behind it is "if --reader specified, use it, otherwise trigger UI related to reader selection") Right now "run" is assigned to the reader.

Is something like this possible?

[remkop]

Thanks for raising this.
Picocli has logic to prevent other options from being assigned to the --reader option, but as of 4.0.4, it does not check for subcommands. I agree that it should check for subcommands as well.

I've pushed a fix for this to master. Can you verify?

[remkop]

I’m still looking at further improvements so that end users can use quoted arguments to prevent the value being interpreted as a subcommand. For example:

# invokes the run subcommand
mycmd -r run app arg1 arg2 --something

# “run” is assigned to reader option 
mycmd -r “run” app arg1 arg2 --something

The above works when parser setting trimQuotes == false (the default), but currently not when trimQuotes == true, because the quotes are trimmed before the value is interpreted. I am thinking about changing this, but still considering the impact...

[remkop]

I'm going to leave the quoting logic alone for now.
The reported issue is fixed on master, we can look at further improving options with optional values later.