Short option which allows zero arguments followed by another short option without dash

[RL-S]

I have an option that allows zero or more arguments:

std::vector<std::string> optStr;
app.add_option("-o,--option", optStr, "option help string")->expected(0,1);

and a flag:

bool myFlag {false};
app.add_flag("-f,--flag", myFlag, "flag help string");

and I'd like to be allowed to call it like this:

app -of

but apparently, CLI11 places "f" into optStr. Any way of making this work?

Calling app -fo works, but that's not the point.

[jzakrzewski]

How is anybody supposed to know, whether "f" should be treated as an argument or as a flag if that was allowed?

[RL-S]

Whitespace. -abcd == -a -b -c -d, while -a bcd means bcd is the argument. Otherwise there's that inconsistency anyway.

[phlptp]

Looking at this a little closer, there is probably an inconsistency here in the way multiple single arguments are treated with a single -.
As you have it -of has to treat it as -o=f if it didn't it would open up all sorts of issues.

However, there is a modifier validate_optional_arguments() to the option which would allow a validation step to discriminate optional arguments from others. Which looking at the code is not consistently applied in the case of chaining single character options.

So the documentation states that a non flag option must come last in the chain, however, this case is a bit of a gray area and an argument could be made that if combined with validate_optional_arguments() and a validator maybe should be supported.

I don't think there is any way to make this work currently.