Alias short arguments

[connorskees]

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Describe your use case

I have a project that needs to offer 2 shorthand flags (-s and -t) for the same argument in order to conform to a reference implementation from another language. The latter of the two is hidden and exists only for backwards compatibility; however, some old tools only use the hidden form of the flag.

Describe the solution you'd like

I'd be looking for something similar to Arg::alias but for shorthand arguments. It would probably make sense to have the signature look like

pub fn alias_short<S: Into<&'help str>>(mut self, name: S) -> Self;

that adds a hidden shorthand alias.

The relevant code

clap/src/build/arg/mod.rs

Line 358 in 70287ea

pub fn alias<S: Into<&'help str>>(mut self, name: S) -> Self {

Alternatives, if applicable

It shouldn't be too hard to just add a hidden flag and then check if either are set, but it seems unintuitive to only allow aliasing of long arguments.

[kbknapp]

I agree it's a gap in what we currently offer. I can't say it'll make the cut for the 3.0 release, but it should be added shortly after.

Thanks for issue.

[pksunkara]

Does that mean we need to rename alias to long_alias and other methods similarly?

[kbknapp]

Does that mean we need to rename alias to long_alias and other methods similarly?

I hadn't thought that far yet.... ugh. 😟

... [ thinking intensifies ] ...

I'd say no. So long as the docs are explicit that alias is for longs, and if they wish to find something similar but for shorts, look for short_alias I think it's fine.