Anyone else needs a "unparse" feature?

[qwfy]

Currently, clap (and basically any command line parsers) parses command line arguments (list of strings) into rust data types.

I found that I also needs the other direction - I have a rust data type, and I want to turn it into a list of strings (of course, when parsed, gives back the rust data type). The purpose is programmatically and SAFELY generate bash command to be executed somewhere else (outside of the "unparsing"/"serializing" program).

Anyone else find this feature useful?

[stonerfish]

serde?

[qwfy]

You mean serialize the arg into another format like json? That's doable, but doesn't seem very elegant.

[epage]

So you want to be able to add a derive/annotations for a foreign CLI so you can convert the struct to the std::process:;Command call?

This sounds like #3131 and #3131 (comment) steps through some of the challenges.

[qwfy]

In my case, the consumer of the unparsed MyArg, is the same cargo artifact that defines the MyArg, the execution of the consumer binary is on a remote machine, not std::process::Command.

But otherwise, yes, at its core, it's the same thing, a way to turn MyArg into a list of strings.