Parse multiple commands without exiting the process

[Tanja-4732]

Goals

• Parse a final (immutable) string and take action accordingly
• Keep the process open (including on -h and -v, and even on incorrect input)
• Use commander.js as a library (will get called sometimes later, triggered by events)

Edit:

Goals continuation:

• Get the output from -v and -h into a string instead of into the terminal

Use case

A bot which should listen for new messages in a live-chat channel.
Upon the arrival of a new message, it will look for a specific prefix, then send the command to commander.js to be parsed, and will take action accordingly.

Notice: The bot itself runs on a server in an automated manner and doesn't need nor expect any command-line arguments. The goal here is to parse several commands without the node process exiting because commander.js feels like it.

When a prefix -v comes along, it should respond. And it does - great!
But now my bot has made a clean exit.
Turns out commander.js decides when my app is done executing.

This behaviour is, of course, unacceptable, as the next user typing prefix -v into the chat will wait forever, for the bot is now shut down.

The fact that the bot needs to be reconnected to the chat-API and a database every time it starts doesn't make this situation easier.

TL;DR

How does one parse multiple commands without having their app shut down in between?
How to get the output from -v and -h into a string instead of into the terminal?

---

PS: #443 Talks about something somewhat-related

[shadowspawn]

Thanks for the use case, and for the succinct TL;DR too.

Related open issues about not calling exit: #443 #575

And issues about allowing custom exit code, so similar but different use case: #188 #435

[shadowspawn]

I have started work on an exit override: #945 (comment)

[shadowspawn]

There are improvements on the develop branch for the next release (#1040).

[shadowspawn]

v4.0.0-0 prerelease published: #1067

[shadowspawn]

v4.0.0 has been released.