Is there a way to determine if the help option has been specified in the command line options programmatically?

[llu23]

I could parse it with all the possible -h, --help, /? ect.. but wondering it there is already a way

[jonsequitur]

If help was requested, regardless of what the user passed on the command line, the following should work:

ParseResult.CommandResult.Children.GetByAlias("-h")

This assumes "-h" is a valid help alias. It's possible to customize the help aliases.

[elgonzo]

@jonsequitur

how would this be used in practice?

The following simple approach doesn't work

var parseResult = myRootCommand.Parse(args);
parseResult.CommandResult.Children.GetByAlias("-h");

because the Command.Parse extension methods don't set up the defaults as the CommmandBuilder.UseDefaults method would do. Thus the command won't have the help option, with the parser failing to identify any help alias:

command-line-api/src/System.CommandLine/CommandExtensions.cs

Lines 58 to 67 in 43be769

	public static ParseResult Parse(
	this Command command,
	params string[] args) =>
	new Parser(command).Parse(args);
	public static ParseResult Parse(
	this Command command,
	string commandLine,
	IReadOnlyCollection<char>? delimiters = null) =>
	new Parser(command).Parse(commandLine);

To me this feels like a bug, as i believe Command.Parse should operate with the same (internal) CommandBuilder/Parser configuration as Command.Invoke does.

(As a workaround / alternative solution one could "manually" create a CommandBuilder with defaults and obtain a parser from it; pretty much like the CommandExtensions.GetInvocationPipeline method does.)