Re: [boost] [program_options] option recognition is too permissive

From: Vladimir Prus (vladimir_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-05-22 12:18:01

Florent Teichteil wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I suggest to improve options' parsing error recognition, since
> program_options does not throw an exception for command line options
> that are substrings of actual options.
> 
> To be clear : assume we add an option "myoption" with the
> boost::program_options::options_description::add_options() function.
> 
> The following command line options are recognized (program_options
> does not throw an exception):
> myoption [OK,should be recognized]
> myopt [BAD,should not be recognized]
> 
> The following command line options are not recognized (program_options
> throws an exception):
> myoptions [OK,should not be recognized]
> myopr  [OK,should not be recognized]
> 
> I suggest program_options should parse the entire option string until
> reaching a '=' or ' ' character, and then trying to recognize this
> option.

This is by design. There's a style option 'allow_guessing' that's on by
default, but you can always pass a different style to the parse_command_line
function.

- Volodya