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* Introduction
Hamlet, because "to zero, or not to zero - that is the question."
Basically, I need a simple way to enforce constraints on command line
flags without having to (yet) resort to third-party CLI libraries like
Cobra, urfave, kong, etc.
In Go, every datatype has a *zero value*. For example the zero value
of the `string` type is "", that of the `int` type is 0, and so on. We
can map this concept to propositional logic by defining a value to be
*false* if it's the zero value, and *true* otherwise. In doing so, we
impose a strictly higher-order concept on Go datatypes: this isn't to
be confused with Go's own boolean `true` and `false` values. Loosely
speaking, if a value is true, it's considered "present"; and if false,
it's considered absent, missing, not provided, or what have you.
* Command-Line Arguments
I'm currently working on a web crawler. As of this writing, it gives
users the option of launching the crawl either with a full URL using
the `url` flag, or else with a shortcode read, using the `shortcode`
flag, from a CSV file. Furthermore, if `shortcode` is provided, an
additional `file` flag can specify the CSV file containing the
shortcodes. Two things to note here:
1. Exactly one of `url` or `shortcode` are required for launching the
web crawler.
2. The `file` flag only applies whenever `shortcode` is given; using
it with `url` should be flagged as an error.
I could attempt to enforce these constraints via one of the
aforementioned third-party libraries by, for example, making `url` and
`shortcodes` subcommands. However, I couldn't help but stumble on the
realization explained in the Introduction, and became curious if it's
viable enough for implementation in a real application.
* Constraints
And so, along these lines, we have the following constraints. Note
that `⊻` is the XOR operator.
```
shortcode ⊻ url
file → shortcode
file → ~url
```
At first I was tempted to assert `file ↔ shortcode`, but I still
wanted to keep the file argument optional, so that a default value
could be used. Hence we can't assert `~file → ~shortcode`, which
would've otherwise given us the double implication. In fact, it was
this edge case that led me into the wider world of considering logical
combinators in general, and not just whether two variables are either
both zero or both non-zero.
* References
https://stackoverflow.com/q/33115946/4570292
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