Allow single line help messages

[tommy-mitchell]

Currently, help messages always have surrounding newlines:

meow/index.js

Line 210 in dc0e33c

help = (description ? `\n ${description}\n` : '') + (help ? `\n${help}\n` : '\n');

The user should be able to have a single line message (i.e. without a leading newline). This can either be an option or can be inferred if the provided help text has no newlines:

const cli = meow('$ my-command <arg1>', {
  padHelp: false,
});

// or

const cli = meow('$ my-command <arg1>', { /* … */ });

[tommy-mitchell]

Related: #95

[sindresorhus]

What's the argument? It looks better when surrounded by newlines. The bar for adding options is high. I doubt I would add an option for something as minor as this.

[tommy-mitchell]

I agree not an option, though I think it can be a little unintuitive that meow('single line usage info') becomes

$ my-command

	single line usage info

I expected it to be

$ my-command
single line usage info

For example, cp has the following usage info:

$ cp
usage: cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fi | -n] [-aclpsvXx] source_file target_file
       cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fi | -n] [-aclpsvXx] source_file ... target_directory

Perhaps if the provided help text has no newlines, it could be outputted without a leading newline.

However, I do understand the argument for readibility with spacing and enforcing best practices on users. Feel free to close this.

[sindresorhus]

Maybe we could not indent it if it's a single line? That would make it look slightly nicer.

[tommy-mitchell]

I'd be okay with that.

[sindresorhus]

Ok. Let's do that.

[tommy-mitchell]

Should this extend to description as well? Cases:

• help and description are set - same behavior as now:

  $ my-command
  
    My command's description.
  
    My command's help.
  
  

• only help is set - no indent:

  $ my-command
  
  My command's help.
  
  

• only description is set - no indent:

  $ my-command
  
  My command's description.
  
  

---

Related, should the fact that --version is single-line have any bearing on this?

$ my-command --version
0.5.2

$ 

[sindresorhus]

Should this extend to description as well? Cases:

Yes

[sindresorhus]

@tommy-mitchell What do you think of removing the indent in meow? I no longer remember why I added it and it seems like all the major CLI frameworks (swit-arguments-parser, Clap, Yargs, etc.) do not use an indent.

[tommy-mitchell]

@sindresorhus I kind of like how it looks, but I think a simple indent option would suffice:

meow(`
	Usage
	  $ foo [--bar]
`, {
	importMeta: import.meta,
	indent: false,
	flags: {
		// ...
	},
});

Where indent is:

/* @default 2 */
indent: number | false

[sindresorhus]

I also used to like it, but I'm seeing less value of it now for some reason. We can start with an option. We'll need that anyway if we decide to change the default in the future. Thanks.

#240 (comment)