[boost] [program_options] Improving error text in exceptions

Subject: [boost] [program_options] Improving error text in exceptions
From: Leo Goodstadt (bunbun68_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-11-15 11:11:19

On 15 November 2011 09:08, Vladimir Prus <vladimir_at_[hidden] wrote:

> > Leo Goodstadt wrote:
> > I would very much like to make the error messages in program_options
> > exceptions more consistent and informative.
>
> I've looked over the error messages you have proposed, and I think it's
> an overall improvement. I would appreciate patch to make this change.
> Thanks!

Cool. Will do that. The error messages meant for programmers I shall
leave alone.

This exercise is so tedious that I doubt anyone else is going to do
more than tinker with the message text so I am keen to do an
exhaustive job.

As I mentioned, for command line messages,
 <option '--foo_bar' is ambiguous>
seems much clearer than than
 <option 'foo_bar' is ambiguous>.

However, it would be inappropriate to add "--" to config file and dos
style options.

The easiest thing would be to add a "prefix" parameter to the
set_option_name() functions in errors.hpp
These are called inside store() in variables_map.cpp.

To add "--" or "/" prefixes as appropriate, is it sufficient to look
at basic_option::original_tokens and basic_option::string_key?

A) Use no prefix if original_tokens[0] is unprefixed,
B) Use the parsed prefix (original_tokens[0]) if
basic_option::string_key.length() = 1
C) Prefer "--" for long option names

The same logic would apply to

1) exceptions thrown from cmdline::finish_option() in cmdline.cpp
2) options_description::find() (in options_description.cpp) called
from store() (in variables_map.cpp)
3) options_description::find_nothrow() (in options_description.cpp) called from
cmdline::run(),
cmdline::finish_option(),
parse_short_option(), and
parse_disguised_long_option() (in cmdline.cpp)
(Despite its name, find_nothrow() can throw()!)

The difficult case is supporting the correct prefix for
"required_option" in variables_map::notify() (variables_map.cpp).

I propose that where missing options can be specified in both
configuration file and on the command line, the command line should
take precedence, and "--option_name" displayed in the error message.

To support this, "basic_parsed_options" needs an extra prefix field,
which would be set appropriately by
basic_command_line_parser<charT>::run().

Does this make sense?

Thanks,

Leo

--
Leo Goodstadt
University of Oxford, UK