Hi,
My app has (amongst other UIs) a CLI that, as expected, has a small set
of commands. The CLI is written in Ruby, as the rest of the app.
I want to improve my CLI add command by passing all the parameters to it
in one line. Let me give an example of current and wanted behavior:
Current:
add
Type: item_type_goes_here
Title: item_title_goes_here
Description: item_desc_goes_here
.
.
.
Wanted:
add type title [desc] [attr 1] [attr 2] … [attr n]
Now, the strings for each paramater recv by add should be entered
between double-quotes, like:
add book “My dying bride” “A fictionary book” “Ed’s Publishing&CO”
My question is who is it best to parse this?
I could use regexp all the way, maybe String#scan too. But I think there
should be a better/cleaner way of doing this.
What I need/expect is a behavior similar to any UNIX shell.
How does Ruby handle tokens? Is there any library for that? I couldn’t
find anything in core (and that seemed a bit strange to me).
Going a little crazier I might even consider nested double-quotes for
something like:
add book “The “real” deal” “It’s complicated” “Critics say it’s
hilarious”
Well I can live without the last example, but the first one is a must.
Any tips&tricks are welcomed, otherwise regexp and a dozen test cases
will bring this to a happy end…