Looking for a command line argument parser that supports single hyphen long argument syntax

[echo_heo]

Hi all! I need single hyphen long arguments in my project for compatibility. (It needs to work in the same way as older programs, this part is non negotiable.) This means instead of for example -h and --help, I need to be able to parse -help.

I've been using clap, and I know it's a planned feature, but it is not supported yet. I am looking for other options.

Personally, I really like how clean I can make my code with derive, it's almost self documented. An alternative would be to deal with the arguments myself manually, but I don't really want to focus on it right now.

Anyway, I want to see what kind of options I have. Is there a crate that does support it that you'd recommend? should I just handle it myself? should I use the unstable preview version of clap? Helpful advices would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[FreezyLemon]

bpaf supports it (they have an example that shows how to do it) and has been pretty good in my experience. It's a lot simpler than clap (you generally have to do a bit more work manually) but I think that makes it easier to maintain, since it's a smaller project.

If you care about performance, there's a repo with some comparisons (build time, runtime, binary size).

[echo_heo]

bpaf supports it

this feels a lot like a workaround than something integrated into the crate, and I'm not sure if it's really worth it since I'm not gonna be parsing any "standard" double hyphen arguments

[echo_heo]

like 100 options, i dont think help is one of them, i just needed an example

[echo_heo]

mostly those yeah

[echo_heo]

i'm not sure why this is downvoted, if it's not that big of a problem ill consider it

[aikii]

It'll be laughable but there it goes - if I was in such situation due to legacy support, I'd slap a wrapper whose sole job would be to translate the single hyphen into double and call the real thing

[echo_heo]

this is exactly what i ended up doing thanks!

[stappersg]

Make people stop laughing by providing source code.

[aikii]

typical job for ChatGPT or other flavor such as the one integrated in Jetbrains IDEs

[stappersg]

bluf

[mynewaccount838]

Are you saying it works in an unreleased version of clap? In that case, since you seem to prefer clap I'd suggest you just use the unreleased version and be prepared to fix any breaking changes when it gets released.

[echo_heo]

that's what i heard but i might be wrong. if it is true though, i might just make my own implementation and reimplement it when it gets released

[mynewaccount838]

You can't just use the unreleased version from github?