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Fix inconsistent argument parsing #5189

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Problem

There is no consistent way to open an arbitrary filename using the kak commandline.

Bad edgecases are:

  1. files named --help
  2. files that start with a -
  3. files that start with a +

Current Behaviour

  1. You can't open a file named --help from the command line.
  2. Filenames including an - can be opened by adding a -- parameter to separate them from options.
  3. Filenames starting with a + can be opened by adding a +0 to the end of the commandline. Only the last occurrence of a + prefixed parameter is used for positioning within the buffer.

This means that kak -- test0 +test1 -test2 +0 will open buffers for test0, +test1 and -test2 this works around 2 and 3. But kak -- --help +0 still shows the usage string.

To fix problem 1 you'd currently have to generate an argument to the -e switch that includes edit -- "some file" for each file you want to open. The generated kakoune script in turn would of course need to have the filenames escaped for kakoune...

Expected Behaviour

  • There should be a simple syntax that guarantees that the following argument is opened in a buffer and does not allow for any special treatment.
  • The --help special case is just weird and I'd like it to be removed or respect the -- separator.
  • -- should also prohibit any occurrence of a + positioning argument afterwards.

I want to be able to guarantee that kak -- <FILE> opens a file named <FILE> and does nothing else with the argument.

What did I do?

  1. I removed the --help special case. There's no nice way to make it work.
  2. I extended the ParametersParser to accept a +<line>:<column> switch according to it's current behaviour on the command line, except that it does respect the --.
  3. I replaced the +<line>:<col> special handling in main.cc with the new ParametersParser switch.

Other Sideeffects

The parsing of + and +: is currently not doing what is documented. It's implementation currently uses a gj instead of a ge command. This behaviour is fixed in the new implementation.

Consideration

  • This is technically a breaking change to the commandline invocation of kakoune. Invocations using both -- and +<line>:<column> will break, though I've never seen it used like this.

  • The usage string is slightly incorrect. The position switch needs to come before the --.

  • This new ParametersParser support for a +<line>:<col> switch could now also be used for the edit command. This would allow the commandline and the builtin command to use the same syntax for specifying the postition. I don't know how I would combine it with edit's current line and column argument though, since I don't want a breaking change here.

The current help output of kakoune doesn't mention that a double dash
(`--`) can be used to separate the files from options.
This special case was not handled in the `ParametersParser` and
therefore did not respect the `--` separator for switches.
Adding the `WithCoord` flag will make the `ParametersParser` try to
parse a special `+<line>:<column>` VIM-style switch.
This moves the parameter parsing for the `+<line>:<column>` switch
of the commandline to the `ParametersParser`. The position switch now
respects the `--` separator between switches and files.

The manpage does not document the old behaviour of `+:[column]`.
`+:[column]` works exactly like `+`. This is compatible with the
previously documented behaviour for `+:`.

The help message is does not mention that omitting the line or column
moves the cursor to the last line or column. The explanation in the
manpage should suffice.
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@mawww mawww left a comment

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I am not too keen on this WithCoord change, the ParameterParser is used for parsing arguments to all commands in Kakoune, and it seems wrong to add a special case to it for this very specific argument type.

If we want to treat -- as "only file names after this" as vim does, I would prefer to look for "--" in the parameters and only run the parameter parser on arguments before it, adding arguments after it to the files vector.

@PJungkamp
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PJungkamp commented Jul 3, 2024

Searching for -- in the arguments introduces a subtle difference in behavior to the ParametersParser handling of --.

Doing a simple find(params, "--") search aborts at any --. The ParametersParser only respects the -- if it expects a switch.

Here's an example implementation:

auto dd = find(params, `--`);
auto parser = ParametersParser{Range{params.begin(), dd}, param_desc};
if (dd != params.end())
     ++dd;

auto position = find_if(parser, [](auto &p){ return p.starts_with("+"); });
std::optional<BufferCoord> init_coord = std::nullopt;
Vector<StringView> positonals{parser.begin(), position};
if (position != parser.end())
{
    positionals.insert(positionals.end(), position + 1, parser.end());
    // parse position
    init_coord = ...;
}
positionals.insert(positionals.end(), dd, params.end());

kak -s -- file would now throw an error because it's missing the session name between -s and --. It's now impossible to have -- as an argument to any command line switch. Passing a -- to -s is currently possible.

I find this significantly more complex than the WithCoord implementation while it's also more restrictive. I'd rather replace the ParametersParser entirely and do custom commandline handling to cover all edgecases properly, e.g. by introducing a CmdlineParametersParser.

@mawww Would you still prefer using something like my pseudo code above?

@mawww
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mawww commented Jul 15, 2024

Sorry for the delay in responding, life got busy, I guess both are not too satisfying, but I'd rather keep the coord handling out of the general code. So yeah, I'd prefer the version that does not support passing -- as an argument to switches. Its a slight loss of generality but I really hope nobody is masochist enough to name their session --.

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2 participants