Handle options without delimiter

[janvhs]

Many commands like core utils install accept arguments like in following manner: install -m700. In args this leads to individual options for m, 7, 0 and 0, respectively. I am unsure if implementing this is possible with the dynamic approach taken by args, but it's worth to mention for completeness’ sake.

[natemoo-re]

Hmm, that's a good callout! I'll have to check how similar tools handle this. Hoping to match the "generally expected" behavior with this library.

[natemoo-re]

Did a bit of testing, and it seems like major JavaScript libraries all handle -m700 correctly, so this is definitely a bug.
Scenario 1 -m700

@bomb.sh/args   { mode: true, '0': true, '7': true }
node parseArgs  { mode: '700' }
deno parseArgs  { mode: '700' }
yargs-parser    { mode: 700 }
minimist        { mode: 700 }

When the value isn't a number, but the shorthand isn't known, every tool seems to align.

Scenario 2 -txyz (all unknown)

@bomb.sh/args  { t: true, x: true, y: true, z: true }
node parseArgs { t: true, x: true, y: true, z: true }
deno parseArgs { t: true, x: true, y: true, z: true }
yargs-parser   { t: true, x: true, y: true, z: true }
minimist       { t: true, x: true, y: true, z: true }

If the value isn't a number, but the alias is specified as a string, we're treating it as a boolean (bug) but Node seems to be the only one to allow a value without the delimiter.

Scenario 3 -test (-t alias for --test)

@bomb.sh/args  { test: true, x: true, y: true, z: true }
node parseArgs { test: 'xyz' }
deno parseArgs { test: "", x: true, y: true, z: true }
yargs-parser   { test: '', x: true, y: true, z: true }
minimist       { test: '', x: true, y: true, z: true }

[janvhs]

Damn node is really rocking it, huh? Most argument parsing libraries outside of JS require you to specify what flags you expect, which probably makes this a lot easier for them to handle. gettext and gettext_long for example.

I could see this being impossible to handle without the user having to specify an alias aka stating what flags you expect for all flags. So perhaps treating everything as a flag, including numbers, would be the less confusing outcome.

EDIT: I just realised I don’t even know how getopt handles this case. I‘ll try it out and would just use it as a reference implementation for this case