What does HackerNews think of docopts?

Argbash – Bash Argument Parsing Code Generator | Mar 2023

I have great pleasure when using docopt in Python.

I see docopts is ‘the same’ implementation but for shell, have never tried it though.

==== docopt helps you:

- define the interface for your command-line app, and - automatically generate a parser for it. ====

http://docopt.org/

https://github.com/docopt/docopts

Argbash – Bash Argument Parsing Code Generator | Mar 2023

Huh, it uses M4 to build its DSL, how quaint.

I wish there were more projects on the other side of the spectrum: take the script's self-reported usage string, à la docopt [0], and derive argument-parsing code from that. After all, we have GPT-4 now.

[0] https://github.com/docopt/docopts

Argc – A handy way to handle sh/bash CLI parameters | Mar 2022

Feels like https://github.com/docopt/docopts

Bash code generator for command-line arguments | Oct 2020

Expand Context ↕

Docopt exists (now, think it was originally python) for many languages including bash [0] (or perhaps it's POSIX, haven't checked).

I like it too, not least because I can use ~the same thing in multiple languages and not have to remind myself how the arg parser for language X works each time.

[0] - https://github.com/docopt/docopts

Testing Bash with BATS | Feb 2019

Yes! So much yes. Many developers write crappy Bash scripts because they don't see it as a real language, but it's an interpreted language just like Ruby, Python, Perl, etc.

If you're going to design modular libraries and scripts with best practices, unit tests, etc, for those languages, then you should be doing the same with Bash.

If you're writing production scripts using Bash, you should be following software best practices - don't give me any "it's just Bash" excuses.

Mocking In addition to bats-mock (part of the bats library in the article), there is another mocking approach: https://pbrisbin.com/posts/mocking_bash/ They both have their uses.

Documentation NaturalDocs ( https://www.naturaldocs.org/ ) can happily parse & extract doc comments from your bash scripts & libraries: https://www.naturaldocs.org/ Just define your own language:

https://www.naturaldocs.org/reference/languages.txt/#adding_...

  Format: 1.4
  
  Language: bash
  Shebang Strings: bash
  Extensions: bash sh
  Ignore Extensions: bats
  Line Comments: #

Linting Use shellcheck, it's amazing: https://www.shellcheck.net/ If you use Vim, w0rp/ale knows how to integrate with it for real-time feedback: https://github.com/w0rp/ale/tree/master/ale_linters/sh

Argument Parsing Use Docopt ( http://docopt.org/ ) to get modern arg-parsing in your Bash scripts. Don't waste your time trying to roll your own or use the built-in anemic arg-parsing. Shells implementation: https://github.com/docopt/docopts

Use Bash built-ins Stop invoking external processes for features already available in Bash: https://github.com/dylanaraps/pure-bash-bible

More good resources:

* http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

* https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html

* http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashGuide

BUT why are you using Bash? Go use a modern language and don't suffer the idiosyncrasies of Bash where you have to re-invent many common libraries already available like JSON parsers, etc.

My favorite Bash replacement is Python + Plumbum: https://plumbum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ All the convenience of Bash when invoking commands (no more subprocess()!) with the joy of Python.