ArgumentOverture

Posted on Sep 30, 2018

A Swift Playground aiming to provide some functional helpers to parse arguments for command line tools. It uses Overture and is build for high composability, flexibility and little impact on your project’s freedom to evolve.

A central use case was Archery’s: only actually interpreted arguments shall be consumed. Any others shall be collected (remaining) or should prevent execution (exhaust), depending on the current command.

First of all an example usage.

// Experiment
do {
    let (isVerbose, whoToGreet, language, _) = try with(["-v", "hi", "Some string", "--language", "en"], chain(
        flag("verbose", "v"),
        positional("Name"),
        argument("language", "l"),
        exhaust
    ))
} catch {
    print("Command failed:", error)
}

The implementation of the micro-library itself.

// Errors
private func quoted(_ string: String) -> String {
    return "\"\(string)\""
}

public protocol StringConvertibleError: Error, CustomStringConvertible {}

public struct MissingArgumentError: StringConvertibleError {
    public let name: String?
    public var description: String {
        return with(name, pipe(
            map(quoted),
            map { "Missing argument \($0)" },
            ??"Missing argument"
        ))
    }
}

public struct NonExhaustiveArgumentsError: StringConvertibleError {
    public let remaining: [String]
    public var description: String {
        return "Unused arguments: \(remaining)"
    }
}

// Domain
private func isArgument(named name: String) -> (String) -> Bool {
    return { $0 == "-\(name)" || $0 == "--\(name)" }
}

private func isOneArgument(of names: [String]) -> (String) -> Bool {
    return { passed in
        names.lazy
        .map(isArgument(named:))
        .reduce(false, { $0 || $1(passed) })
    }
}

private func indexOfArguments(named names: [String]) -> ([String]) -> Array<String>.Index? {
    return { passed in
        passed.index(where: isOneArgument(of: names))
    }
}

public func flag(_ names: String...) -> ([String]) -> ([String], Bool) {
    return { arguments in
        if let index = arguments.index(where: isOneArgument(of: names)) {
            var result = arguments
            result.remove(at: index)
            return (result, true)
        } else {
            return (arguments, false)
        }
    }
}

public func positional(_ name: String? = nil) -> ([String]) throws -> ([String], String) {
    return { arguments in
        let index = arguments.index(where: { !$0.starts(with: "-")})
        if let index = index {
            var result = arguments
            result.remove(at: index)
            return (result, arguments[index])
        } else {
            throw  MissingArgumentError(name: name)
        }
    }
}

public func optional<A>(_ f: @escaping ([String]) throws -> ([String], A)) -> ([String]) throws -> ([String], A?) {
    return { arguments in
        do {
            let (remaining, parsed) = try f(arguments)
            return (remaining, .some(parsed))
        } catch is MissingArgumentError {
            return (arguments, nil)
        } catch {
            throw error
        }
    }
}

public func argument(_ names: String...) -> ([String]) throws ->  ([String], String) {
    return { arguments in
        if let flagIndex = indexOfArguments(named: names)(arguments), arguments.count >= flagIndex + 2 {
            let value = arguments[flagIndex + 1]
            var rest = arguments
            rest.remove(at: flagIndex + 1)
            rest.remove(at: flagIndex)
            return (rest, value)
        } else {
            throw MissingArgumentError(name: names.first)
        }
    }
}

public func exhaust(_ arguments: [String]) throws -> ([String], Void) {
    if arguments.isEmpty {
        return ([], ())
    } else {
        throw NonExhaustiveArgumentsError(remaining: arguments)
    }
}

public func remaining(_ arguments: [String]) -> ([String], [String]) {
    return ([], arguments)
}

What’s next?

The same concept could be applied to processes and especially handling interrupts:

with(Process(), concat(
    setWorkingDir("tmp"),
    passInterrupt(),
    setBashCommand("") // is { concat(setLaunchPath("/bin/bash"), setArguments(["-c", $0]) }
))

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