Hello folks, If you ever have a need to write a command line script in Racket, you may be interested in the package I've just put up. Normally you'd write such scripts using Racket's built-in command-line <https://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/Command-Line_Parsing.html#%28form._%28%28lib._racket%2Fcmdline..rkt%29._command-line%29%29> or parse-command-line <https://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/Command-Line_Parsing.html#%28def._%28%28lib._racket%2Fcmdline..rkt%29._parse-command-line%29%29> form. These offer a lot of functionality, but it takes time to learn how they work and the syntax is somewhat idiosyncratic. So, I've written a #lang that allows you to achieve the same functionality but with more familiar and extensible syntax, #lang cli <https://docs.racket-lang.org/cli/index.html>.
The language is composed of 5 forms - help, flag, constraint, program, and run. With these 5 forms, you get all of the functionality of the built-in parse-command-line form, and with syntax that's much simpler. In fact, the nontrivial forms of the language simply use Racket's normal function definition syntax, so there's very little to learn -- you basically write normal functions and they are implicitly wired to accept their inputs via the command line. At the moment, the functionality offered is at parity with the built-in forms, but there are some planned additions that would make it more powerful, including composable commands <https://github.com/countvajhula/cli/issues/3>, generalized constraints <https://github.com/countvajhula/cli/issues/6>, and argument schemas <https://github.com/countvajhula/cli/issues/7>. So if you write command line scripts, I encourage you to give it a try. I also coincidentally came across the package natural-cli <https://docs.racket-lang.org/natural-cli/index.html> by Sage Gerard. Looks like it provides some interesting features and in particular subcommands, which are absent in #lang cli. It very well may be that this package should be leveraged for semantics in #lang cli in the future (Sage if you'd like to add anything about what this package offers, please do). Enjoy, -Sid -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Racket Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/CACQBWFnevJaRg61xLv6ayps-ihGpuUFUFEVbLTH7m929tpex3Q%40mail.gmail.com.
