C#•9mo ago

Guide or Reference for Quality UX With CLI Applications

Are there any good references or guides on designing CLI command structures for high quality UX and ergonomics? Like when to use arguments, when to use options, how to expose a choice as an option, etc.

cned•3/31/25, 11:34 PM

What is the difference between an "argument" an "option" and a "choice"?

Original message was deleted

VoidPointerOP•4/1/25, 4:36 AM

Thanks for the feedback, but the argument vs option part of this is only part of the question, and I quite understand what arguments vs options are. I'm looking for resources on how to design a CLI, from an ergonomic and user-centric point of view.

In my current, very simple use-case, I have the command or verb and the path to a file to be analysed as arguments, and how to sort the output as an option. That's quite neat and meets my usability and user-friendly expectations. Yet now, as the app grows and I add more commands, it becomes more challenging to maintain usability and ergonomic standards with a growing range of possible arguments and options. Right now I even ask should the sort option take a direction, like , or should I have two mutually exclusive sort options, like and . This has a medium to high priority because many commands will have a sort option, and they should all be uniform. That they should at least be uniform for all commands is one of the set of design guidelines I'm looking for, but it was a fairly obvious one I know instinctively as a user and as an engineer.

I'm quite sure the designers of various shells, like Bash, Zsh, and Fish, and PowerShell, have put some thought into this usability aspect, and while I can study all of these and extract the good stuff and improve on the bad for my CLI, I'm sure papers and articles have been written on in, even if no studies done. I think a look at the Gnu and POSIX conventions and their background and or history will be helpful to be, thanks.

Original message was deleted

VoidPointerOP•4/1/25, 5:04 AM

I've done some looking around and found this group. I think the open source document Command Line Interface Guidelines will prove tremendously helpful for what I am looking for, and if nobody knows of any such resources, just that may be enough for me to close this post a bit later.

Command Line Interface Guidelines

An open-source guide to help you write better command-line programs, taking traditional UNIX principles and updating them for the modern day.

Original message was deleted

MODiX•4/2/25, 5:45 AM

Spectre.Console is a .NET library that allows for easy creation of console UIs, text formatting in the console, and command-line argument parsing.
https://spectreconsole.net/

Spectre.Console - Welcome!

Spectre.Console is a .NET library that makes it easier to create beautiful console applications.

Original message was deleted

VoidPointerOP•4/3/25, 1:52 AM

I have no idea, and it really does very little to answer my question. having a pretty console UI and a good command parser does not automatically introduce good design and UX principles and practices for CLI applications. Either the poster has a fetish for Spectre or is a shill for it.

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 4:41 AM

could this has been sent because it also contains a package doing all the heavy lifting for cli args parsing ?

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 4:41 AM

and that they might have example on top of everything that got posted which answers most of it so you could see what it look intern of internal code

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 4:42 AM

which would be part of your decision

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 4:42 AM

or did you both stopped at the image from the link and not looked inside ?

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 4:43 AM

the resource that were posted earlier give already the theory crafting insight, that's all good and fun but you'll need an implementation and i'm guessing that link is one of the existing out of the box implementation

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 4:44 AM

because having fun on theory crafting is good until you find that some idea are harder than other

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 4:44 AM

that probably why it was posted

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 4:44 AM

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 4:45 AM

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 4:45 AM

that's on the home page apparently

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 4:45 AM

with further link down below

TTeBeCo or did you both stopped at the image from the link and not looked inside ?

VoidPointerOP•4/3/25, 7:56 AM

I've previously used Spectre on this project and read their documentation on command parsing, and didn't find what I'm asking for. I found how to create commands, arguments, and options, but not how to uses these for optimum UX. The document on Command Line Interface Guidelines, at https://clig.dev, goes a long way to answer me, and if my question elicits nothing but criticism, I will close the post by reason of the one answer I have found myself. I was just hoping somebody might know about a similar resource to the single one I found.

VVoidPointer I've previously used Spectre on this project and read their documentation on com...

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 11:42 AM

yes we're saying the same thing then

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 11:42 AM

resources you found are for theory crafting

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 11:42 AM

then needs to be confronted to "reality/existing package"

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 11:43 AM

IIRC System.CommandLine and Spectre took 2 different design decision

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 11:43 AM

and you will see that thinking too much theory and not adjusting to the lib can corner you

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 11:43 AM

one example is something like that

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 11:43 AM

which has to do with Options and SubOptions

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 11:44 AM

and one of these API design was in fact not possible at all unless a PR was done on the lib used

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 11:44 AM

meaning that ... "good UX theory crafting" was not applicable

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 11:46 AM

IIRC rely on

TTeBeCo yes we're saying the same thing then

VoidPointerOP•4/3/25, 1:13 PM

I have been looking at the various parsers as well, but will reconsider them in light of the design principles I found in that document. Thanks for you input.

VVoidPointer I have been looking at the various parsers as well, but will reconsider them in ...

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 3:31 PM

as a personal takeaway i would compromised few cli args design and prefer an out of the box cli parser

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 3:31 PM

writing these parser are one of the hardest thing

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 3:32 PM

especially xplat / with file path / quote and double quote / sub command etc ...

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 3:32 PM

thats sort of why i linked that one and should have also linked system.commandline

TeBeCo•4/3/25, 3:32 PM

some compromise are admissible is low ux impact in order to have a proper integration

VoidPointerOP•4/3/25, 3:41 PM

I'm not at all looking for guidance on writing my own parser. That would be daft with those already available. I'm using Cocona Lite for my current project and am very happy with it. I was looking for the type of design advice that helps me choose between having e.g. a sort ascending option and a sort descending option, or have a sort direction argument. All the parsers I know make either way of doing this very easy. I'm concerned about the ergonomics of how the cli input is structured, not how to interpret it.