Building Modern CLI Applications in Go

5

Defining the Command-Line Process

At the core of a command-line application is its ability to process user input and return a result that either a user can easily comprehend or that another process can read as standard input. In Chapter 1, Understanding CLI Standards, we discussed the anatomy of a command-line application, but this chapter will go into detail on each aspect of its anatomy, breaking down the different types of input: subcommands, arguments, and flags. Additionally, other inputs will be discussed: stdin, signals, and control characters.

Just as there are many types of input that a command-line application can receive, there are many types of methods for processing data. This chapter won’t leave you hanging – examples of processing ...