subcommands

The @SuperCommand annotation can be used to create a command/subcommand structure. The parser that's created by a @SuperCommand will stop parsing after the last @Parameter was read, and return the remaining tokens as a String[] array. This array can then be passed to a @Command or even another @SuperCommand.

Let's try to create a git-like interface with this.

@SuperCommand(name = "git")
abstract class GitCommand {

  @Parameter(index = 0)
  abstract String command();
}

The generated parser will return something that contains both a GitCommand and a String[] of the remaining tokens:

GitCommand_Parser.GitCommandWithRest result = new GitCommand_Parser().parseOrExit(args);
GitCommand gitCommand = result.getResult();
String[] rest = result.getRest();

The command can be inspected, in order to decide what to do with the rest:

if ("add".equals(gitCommand.command())) {
  GitAddCommand addCommand = new GitAddCommand_Parser().parseOrExit(rest);
  // ...
}

where GitAddCommand could look like this

@Command(name = "git-add")
abstract class GitAddCommand {

  @Parameters
  abstract List<String> pathspec();
}

See also

• @Command vs @SuperCommand