miller/pkg/climain
John Kerl 86c8097dc2
Default to "cat" verb when none is supplied (#2060)
* Default to "cat" verb when none is supplied (#2029)

Invocations like 'mlr --j2y' or 'mlr --c2p' previously failed with
"no verb supplied", forcing users to type the trailing 'cat'
explicitly for pure format conversions. Default the verb to 'cat'
in that case. Bare 'mlr' with no flags, no verb, and no files
still prints the main usage banner.

This handles flag-only invocations (e.g. 'mlr --c2j < input.csv'
or 'mlr --c2j --from input.csv'). File names without a preceding
verb are still parsed as verb candidates and continue to error if
not found; that broader change is out of scope here.

* Use ${MLR} substitution for bare-mlr regression case (#2029)

The regtester only substitutes the mlr executable when the cmd
starts with "mlr " (with a trailing space). The bare-mlr usage-banner
test had a cmd of just "mlr", so on CI -- which invokes regtest with
a relative path like 'test/../mlr' -- the test shelled out to a
literal 'mlr' that isn't on PATH and failed with exit 127.

Switch the cmd to ${MLR} (the regtester's explicit substitution
token) so the case runs the right binary in any invocation context.
2026-05-17 12:13:21 -04:00
..
doc.go Export library code in pkg/ (#1391) 2023-09-10 17:15:13 -04:00
mlrcli_mlrrc.go Multiple style updates (#1974) 2026-02-16 15:49:21 -05:00
mlrcli_parse.go Default to "cat" verb when none is supplied (#2060) 2026-05-17 12:13:21 -04:00
mlrcli_shebang.go Multiple style updates (#1974) 2026-02-16 15:49:21 -05:00
README.md Export library code in pkg/ (#1391) 2023-09-10 17:15:13 -04:00

Logic for parsing the Miller command line.

  • pkg/climain is the flag-parsing logic for supporting Miller's command-line interface. When you type something like mlr --icsv --ojson put '$sum = $a + $b' then filter '$sum > 1000' myfile.csv, it's the CLI parser which makes it possible for Miller to construct a CSV record-reader, a transformer chain of put then filter, and a JSON record-writer.
  • pkg/cli contains datatypes for the CLI-parser, which was split out to avoid a Go package-import cycle.
  • I don't use the Go flag package. The flag package is quite fine; Miller's command-line processing is multi-purpose between serving CLI needs per se as well as for manpage/docfile generation, and I found it simplest to roll my own command-line handling here. More importantly, some Miller verbs such as sort take flags more than once -- mlr sort -f field1 -n field2 -f field3 -- which is not supported by the flag package.