Custom sorting of arguments in help message #6140
Description
Please complete the following tasks
- I have searched the discussions
- I have searched the open and rejected issues
Clap Version
master
Describe your use case
By using next_display_order I've managed to get clap sort arguments alphabetically in the --help message. However, I don't like the sorting behaviour of clap. I would like to sort my arguments by the long argument names first.
Currently my help message looks like:
-V, --version
Print version
-X, --method <METHOD>
Request method
[default: get]
But I want --method to be before --version. This aligns with the other programs such as cURL. (see curl --help or man curl)
Sorting is done by the following code in help_template.rs:
fn option_sort_key(arg: &Arg) -> (usize, String) {
// Formatting key like this to ensure that:
// 1. Argument has long flags are printed just after short flags.
// 2. For two args both have short flags like `-c` and `-C`, the
// `-C` arg is printed just after the `-c` arg
// 3. For args without short or long flag, print them at last(sorted
// by arg name).
// Example order: -a, -b, -B, -s, --select-file, --select-folder, -x
let key = if let Some(x) = arg.get_short() {
let mut s = x.to_ascii_lowercase().to_string();
s.push(if x.is_ascii_lowercase() { '0' } else { '1' });
s
} else if let Some(x) = arg.get_long() {
x.to_string()
} else {
let mut s = '{'.to_string();
s.push_str(arg.get_id().as_str());
s
};
(arg.get_display_order(), key)
}I would like to swap the first if let with the second one for my use case.
Describe the solution you'd like
If possible I would like to simply swap the two if let statements as mentioned above. Would you accept this change? Or do you think this is an unnecessary opinionated breaking change?
Alternatives, if applicable
If you think this would be too opinionated and break the behaviour of too many users, can we make the sorting behaviour configurable, by somehow providing a sorting function to clap? This way option_sort_key would only be used if the user provided none.
Additional Context
This if for lychee-bin where I want to sort the help message for better usability and align the output more closely to cURL's help message. See: lycheeverse/lychee#1858