Collecting all arguments after flag with Clap

help
1

I'm using Clap to parse command-line arguments. Currently, I have something like this:

struct Cli {
    /// Read (slurp) all input values into one array
    #[arg(short, long)]
    slurp: bool,

    /// List of input files
    remaining: Vec<String>,
}

(The actual type is much larger, but this serves for an illustration.)

Now, I would like to make an additional flag --args: When this flag is given, every argument after it should end up in its corresponding vector.

Example: ./main --slurp file1 file2 --args foo bar should create something like Cli { slurp: true, remaining: ["file1", "file2"], args: ["foo", "bar"]}.

I was expecting this to look somewhat like the following, using trailing_var_arg:

// Cargo.toml contains the following dependency:
// clap = { version = "4.0.0", features = ["derive"] }

use clap::{Parser, ValueEnum};

struct Cli {
    /// Read (slurp) all input values into one array
    #[arg(short, long)]
    slurp: bool,

    /// Arguments
    #[arg(long, trailing_var_arg = true)]  // <----------
    args: Vec<String>,
    
    /// List of input files
    remaining: Vec<String>,
}

fn main() {
    let cli = Cli::parse();
}

Alas, this panics, stating that "Arg::trailing_var_arg can only apply to last positional".
I tried some other things, but all my attempts have failed.

Do you have any ideas?

2

I've found two solutions to this problem: The first was to use:

    /// Arguments
    #[arg(long, allow_hyphen_values = true, num_args = 0..)]
    args: Vec<String>,

This effectively captures all arguments given after --args, including --.

Later, I changed it so --args could be used as a flag:

    #[arg(long)]
    args: bool,

    remaining: Vec<String>,

Now, whenever --args is given (cli.args is true), I simply interpret remaining the way I previously interpreted args.