### ----------------------------------------------------
### -- shorten-sub-commands
### -- Licenses: Artistic-2.0
### -- Authors: Elizabeth Mattijsen
### -- File: README.md
### ----------------------------------------------------
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NAME
====

shorten-sub-commands - allow partial specification of sub-commands

SYNOPSIS
========

```raku
# in script "frobnicate"
multi sub MAIN("foozle")  { say "foozle"  }
multi sub MAIN("barabas") { say "barabas" }
multi sub MAIN("bazzie")  { say "bazzie"  }
use shorten::sub::commands &MAIN;
```

    $ raku frobnicate foo
    foozle
    $ raku frobnicate ba
    'ba' is ambiguous, matches: barabas bazzie
    $ raku frobnicate bar
    barabas

DESCRIPTION
===========

The `shorten::sub::commands` distribution provides a helper module intended to be used for command-line applications that have a sub-command structure (in which the first positional parameter indicates what needs to be done, and there is a separate candidate to handle execution of that command).

When used **after** all `MAIN` candidates have been defined, it will add another candidate that will allow to shorten the command names to be as short as possible (e.g. just "foo" in the example above, or even just "f" as there is only one candidate that starts with "f". Numeric subcommands are also supported, but they will be matched as strings (so `4` on the command line will match `42` in the signature).

Special care has been taken to ensure that re-dispatch doesn't devolve into an infinite loop.

AUTHOR
======

Elizabeth Mattijsen <liz@raku.rocks>

Source can be located at: https://github.com/lizmat/shorten-sub-commands . Comments and Pull Requests are welcome.

If you like this module, or what I'm doing more generally, committing to a [small sponsorship](https://github.com/sponsors/lizmat/) would mean a great deal to me!

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
=====================

Copyright 2022, 2025 Elizabeth Mattijsen

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the Artistic License 2.0.



