Consistency in handling unknown commands/Expose findSuggestions()

[colin-axner]

The default handling of subcommands is to accept arbitrary arguments. If a subcommand is misspelled it prints out the help screen, but if a flag is added then it prints out the error was an unknown flag instead of an unknown command. For example, root subcommand unknown --flag returns ERROR: unknown flag: --flag. Expected behavior should be ERROR: unknown command "unknown".

One workaround I found is to DisableFlagParsing which turns flags into arguments. However, then the help screen is returned rather than the unknown command error. I found adding validation in the run works as a quick fix:

func validateArgs(cmd *cobra.Command, args []string) {
    if len(args) > 0 {
        fmt.Printf("ERROR: unknown command \"%s\" for \"%s\" \n\nDid you mean this?\n\t%v\n", args[0], cmd.CalledAs(), cmd.SuggestionsFor(args[0])[0])

    } else {
        fmt.Println(cmd.Help())
    }  
    return
}

Is there any other way of achieving this desired result? This seems like a function that cobra should support.

Furthermore why is cmd.findSuggestions() private where as cmd.SuggestionsFor public? I think it would be useful to expose findSuggestions so users could simply call a function that returns the full suggestion string instead of manually implementing it like I did above. Not sure if that should be a separate issue, but I think it would be a useful and easy fix.

[mkrump]

Have the same question. Was curious as to the best way to handle this.

[chrisgilmerproj]

Can you give an example of how you used the workaround? I'd love to take a shot at using it myself.

[colin-axner]

Here is my workaround. Here is how I setup the command fields. Hope this helps!

[umarcor]

This is partially being addressed in #842.

[chrisgilmerproj]

Thanks a ton for the example!

[github-actions]

This issue is being marked as stale due to a long period of inactivity

[johnSchnake]

Seems to have been resolved:

➜ ./tmp sub2
Error: unknown command "sub2" for "main"

Did you mean this?
	sub

Run 'main --help' for usage.
➜ ./tmp sub2 --foo
Error: unknown command "sub2" for "main"

Did you mean this?
	sub

Run 'main --help' for usage.

[colin-axner]

Hi! Has it been included in a release? From quick testing, I'm able to reproduce the issue on v1.3.0. The example you reference uses subcommands in relation to the root command main. That works fine, but I'd expect something like:

./tmp sub sub2 --foo
Error: unknown flag: --foo

to occur. Can you confirm this?