bdep-argument-grouping(1)

💖 bdep-argument-grouping — argument grouping facility 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the bdep-argument-grouping(1) page, straight outta the General Commands Manual ✨ this is the little help topic that explains the argument grouping facility — aka the glow-up that lets you make certain options and command line variables apply to just one argument instead of the whole entire command. iykyk 🫶

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

bdep { options }+ argument +{ options }

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

okay so here's the tea 🍓: for certain commands, certain options and command line variables can be grouped so they only apply to specific arguments. that's literally what this help topic is about — the argument grouping facility used for exactly this purpose.

groups can go before (leading) and/or after (trailing) the argument they apply to. a leading group starts with { and ends with }+, while a trailing group starts with +{ and ends with }. for example:

{ --foo --bar }+ arg   # 'arg' with '--foo' '--bar'
arg +{ fox=1 baz=2 }   # 'arg' with 'fox=1' 'baz=2'

multiple leading and/or trailing groups can be specified for the same argument 🌈 no cap. for example:

{ -f }+ { -b }+ arg +{ f=1 } +{ b=2 } # 'arg' with '-f' 'b' 'f=1' 'b=2'

the group applies to a single argument only unless multiple arguments are themselves grouped with { and }. for example:

{ --foo }+ arg1  arg2 +{ --bar }      # 'arg1' with '--foo'
                                      # 'arg2' with '--bar'

{ --foo }+ { arg1  arg2 } +{ --bar }  # 'arg1' with '--foo' '--bar'
                                      # 'arg2' with '--foo' '--bar'

💀 the group separators ({, }+, etc) must be separate command line arguments. in particular, they must not be adjacent either to the arguments inside the group nor to the argument they apply to. all such cases will be treated as ordinary arguments. for example:

{--foo}+ arg   # '{--foo}+' ...
arg+{ --foo }  # 'arg+{' ...

if one of the group separators needs to be specified as an argument verbatim, then it must be escaped with \. for example:

}             # error: unexpected group separator
}x            # '}x'
\}            # '}'
{ \}+ }+ arg  # 'arg' with '}+'

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🎀 BUGS 🎀

found a bug? send bug reports to the users@build2.org mailing list 📬 bestie, they wanna hear about it.

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👑 COPYRIGHT 👑

Copyright (c) 2014-2024 the build2 authors.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the MIT License.

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and that's the whole vibe check 💅 this was bdep 0.17.0, June 2024, signing off like the icon it is — stay grouped, stay slay 🦋💖