Longflag should support dash ('-') chars

[finetjul]

command line applications typically have dashes in the names of their long flags.
It should be possible to have parameters such as:
--no-something
--use-something
...

[millerjv]

I think "-" is supported. I believe either tclap or GenerateCLP was modified to support "-" in the flag name. It might just be at runtime, i.e. you may have specify it as "" but when run, you can substitute "-" for "".

[finetjul]

Here is the error I have at compile time:

ModuleDescriptionParser Error: <longflag> can only contain letters, numbers and underscores and must start with a _ or letter. The offending name is "number-of-elements" at line 47 while parsing <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

Here is the interesting part in the xml:

<integer>
      <name>NumberOfElements</name>
      <label>Number of elements</label>
      <flag>-n</flag>
      <longflag>--number-of-elements</longflag>
      <description><![CDATA[Number of elements per tuple (e.g. 3 for an RGB image). 1 by default]]></description>
      <default>1</default>
    </integer>

While GenerateCLP might support it, ModuleDescriptionParser does not.

[millerjv]

I think you need to "define" the option using "_" (--number_of_elements) but then you can call it with "-" (--number-of-elements).

[jcfr]

We should really fix ModuleDescriptionParser, forcing to use "_" doesn't
really make sens anymore I think.

On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 1:55 PM, Julien Finet [email protected]:

Here is the error I have at compile time:

ModuleDescriptionParser Error: can only contain letters, numbers and underscores and must start with a _ or letter. The offending name is "number-of-elements" at line 47 while parsing

Here is the interesting part in the xml:

NumberOfElements Number of elements -n --number-of-elements 1

While GenerateCLP might support it, ModuleDescriptionParser does not.

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[jcfr]

It seems this is more a hidden feature ... considering that documentation
is generated based on the xml, "-" should be allowed but the associated
C/Cpp variable should be "escaped" so that "_" is used instead of any
special chars.

On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 1:57 PM, Jim Miller [email protected]:

I think you need to "define" the option using "_" (--number_of_elements)
but then you can call it with "-" (--number-of-elements).

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[lassoan]

This has come up in the Slicer forum (https://discourse.slicer.org/t/hyphen-dash-in-cli-command-long-flag-argument/19526), but - as always - there was an easy workaround (rename arguments). Often renaming the arguments is not necessary because short form of the argument can be used (e.g., the long form --input-file is not compatible with SEM but the short form -i is). If all else fail, then it is always possible to add an adaptor Python script (that takes SEM-compatible argument list and calls the executable with any kind of argument list).