Hi Antonio,
> IMHO the parsing of negative numbers can only be fully fixed in the parser.
>
> I have added a check for negative numbers to Arg_parser (the command-line
> argument parser that I use) and now it can optionally parse the negative
> numbers as non-option arguments without reordering them and without hacks or
> bugs. For example, '--help' works in any position. Here is a sample output:
>
> $ arg_parser +15 -Inf 0 -20 -a -nan -c -.5
> option '-a'
> option '-c'
> non-option argument '+15'
> non-option argument '-Inf'
> non-option argument '0'
> non-option argument '-20'
> non-option argument '-nan'
> non-option argument '-.5'
> (options are reordered and negative numbers are treated as non-options)
>
> Maybe Argp and getopt_long can be extended like this.
I don't know how widespread this requirement to have negative numbers as
command-line arguments _and_ short options at the same time — because in
that case, it makes for a more understandable user interface to not allow
any short options at all, only long options.
But if you are working on it, I have two thoughts:
1) It would be useful to generalize "negative number token" to a
function
bool arg_is_not_an_option (const char *argument)
that, in the special case, could be defined by use of strtod().
2) Is it possible to integrate such a feature into a program that
uses getopt_long() without changing getopt_long() itself?
Is it possible to integrate such a feature into a program that
uses argp without changing the argp implementation itself?
Bruno
