Using file globs as arguments to a typer cli behaves differently on windows and linux

[per11235813]

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Example Code

import sys
import typer

print("Data from sys.argv:")
for i, arg in enumerate(sys.argv):
    print(f"sys.argv[{i}] = {arg}")


app = typer.Typer(no_args_is_help=True, add_completion=False)


@app.command()
def find(flist: list[str]):
    """Find files using globs"""
    print("\nFiles found:")
    for f in flist:
        print("  ", f)  


if __name__ == "__main__":
    app()

Description

I am frustrated about performance of find.exe that comes with git-scm, so I want to use python and typer instead.

I use the script above. I want to use globs on the command line, like python find.py ~/AppData/**/*ditto*.db. The attached scripts works and produces the desired output, eg (filename in the output is shorted a bit):

> python find.py ~/AppData/**/*ditto*.db
Data from sys.argv:
sys.argv[0] = C:\Users\d6bqr00\Documents\repo\system\utils\find.py
sys.argv[1] = ~/AppData/**/*ditto*.db

Files found:
   C:\Users\....\Ditto.db

When looking at sys.argv[1] printed out it is clear that the Windows does not expand the glob, but somehow typer or some other library identifies the arguments as a glob and expands it to a list of file names.

I expected to get the argument glob from the command line as a string like def find(glob: str), but then I get all the file names concatenated as a string.

On linux the OS tries to expand the glob and if there are no matches it parses the glob string in a single entry list.

I understand the behavior on linux, but on Windows it seems a bit magical that that the string I provide as argument is identified as a glob and expanded.

I am sorry if I miss something obvious, but not understanding this drives me nuts :-)

Operating System

Linux, Windows

Operating System Details

Linux is WSL on windows 10

Typer Version

0.6.1

Python Version

Python 3.10.7

Additional Context

No response

[ncoghlan]

This appears to be inherited from the underlying default Windows behaviour of click: pallets/click#2359

[ncoghlan]

From local experimentation and the later discussions at #649 and #1076 I worked out how to turn this off:

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app(windows_expand_args=False)

The setting is passed to the CLI invocation, rather than to the app constructor. I can kinda see why click has the defaults it does, but glob-expansion by default without support for the single-quote and backslash expansion (as POSIX shells provide) is definitely surprising!

Given Typer's additional type information, I wonder if it might make sense to turn off the default click level Windows glob expansion, and only add it back for list[Path] parameters (although I guess there would be significant backwards compatibility concerns with doing that).