What features of Odin do you dislike?

General
197

I like the flags package for many reasons, especially the flags.parse procedure.

I’m not fond of the flags.write_usage procedure, in that the printed format is not modifiable and for my taste uses too much white space and extra characters. I’d prefer if there was a procedure that returns a structure that contains all the validated data without the extra formatting. One that does all the same things write_usage does (sort, validate, determine required, min, max, range, types, usage description, flag names, etc), but does not print. This way I could create my own uniform usage printing format from an expected structure that could be reusable across projects.

As a side note, if this is considered as a request, I’d like it if the sort had options like: ([sort only position], [sort position and required], [sort position and required and alphanumeric], etc), where the ignored category of sort-ables are left in their relative position.

Something like [ ]Arg_Tag where the len(Arg_Tag) is the number of fields in the Args :: struct.

Arg_Tag :: struct {
	style:    enum, //.Odin or .Unix
	name:     string, // from subtag args:"name=some_name" || field name
	stype:    string, // string derived from nested type info and named types, (?indistinct?) etc.
	rtype:    ^runtime.Type_Info // for validation procs ??
	usage:    string, // from subtags || empty
	file:     string, // from subtags || default || empty if type is not a file
	perms:    string, // from subtags || default || empty if type is not a file
	min:      int, // from subtags || -1 and/or determined by combinations of range, etc
	max:      int, // from subtags || -1 and/or determined by combinations of range, etc
	pos:      int, // from subtags || -1
	manifold: int, // from subtags || -1 -> .Unix only
	hidden:   bool, // from subtags true if present
	required: bool, // from subtags true if present
	overflow: bool, // from subtags true if present
}

This could have the added benefit that both the flags.parse and flags.write_usage (and other procedures) in flag:core could validate from the same structure without either having to reinvent the wheel on their own, as it appears.

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