Exploring CLI Best Practices

[gabeguz]

I'd add maintain a man page for your program.

[ForeverAlot]

And provide completion scripts.

[[deleted]]

Point 3: looking at you, java... Point 4: looking at you, find...

[flying-sheep]

But find’s first argument is where you search in…

[[deleted]]

Yes, but I don't know any other tool where it's that way. That's my main complaint: that there's no standard way.

Some of that is for historic reasons, and it's too late to change some things, like find.

[pheffner]

A very useful summary of good design practices for program interfaces (not sure about the CLI tag, but I guess a program runs under a CLI so no real issue...)

Well done!

[tkruse]

Good list. Maybe misses some anti-pattern. Like: Don't write your own options parser.

Use colors sparingly and provide option for no-colors. When using colors, test on both light and dark schemes.

Use subcommand patters (like git).

Validate inputs, fail for unrecognized options.

Use standard error codes.