[Bug] Unexpected arguments ignored

[KaKi87]

Hi,

When passing more arguments to a command than it expects, the command is executed without error, receiving only the expected arguments.

It would be nice to throw an error instead, preventing potantially wrong actions/results unforeseen by the user.

One particular case is when an argument is a name/title/label, in which the user may include spaces while forgetting quotes.

On the other hand, I wonder if it would be possible, when said argument is the last (or only) one, to optionally put everything automatically in it, kinda like the spread operator in JS (but still outputting a string) ?

Thanks

[shadowspawn]

It would be nice to throw an error instead, preventing potantially wrong actions/results unforeseen by the user.

You can make this an error by calling .allowExcessArguments(false).

On the other hand, I wonder if it would be possible, when said argument is the last (or only) one, to optionally put everything automatically in it, kinda like the spread operator in JS (but still outputting a string) ?

You can explicitly collect the remaining arguments by declaring the last one as variadic like `.argument('[more-args...]').

Also, all of the arguments are available using cmd.args. This includes both the declared and the excess arguments.

[KaKi87]

Oh, I'm sorry I didn't find these beforehand. 😅

allowExcessArguments(false)

I'd like to request this to be default though, for security reasons.

Thanks

[shadowspawn]

I originally intended excess arguments to be an error by default, but made it opt-in for the first release to reduce breakage at the time:

• WIP: Reject excess arguments by default #1399 (comment)
• Make new excess arguments error opt-in #1429

On a related note, there was an in-depth discussion during the development of parseArgs about unexpected positionals and we eventually decided to make positionals opt-in for strict mode (a shout-out to the thoughtful and patient championing by @bakkot). The extra step in parseArgs to allow positionals has not caused any user feedback that I am aware of.

• Should positionals be opt-in when strict: true? pkgjs/parseargs#85

I am leaning towards making allowExcessArguments false by default in next major version of Commander.

[shadowspawn]

A prerelease is available for v13. The release is tagged as next and can be installed with:

npm install commander@next