blep.js

// This is just a mock for our original command
const string = '!projects-add -f flag -b "Kirk\'s awesome string" -b "Kirk\'s awesome string" -b "Kirk\'s awesome string" something that won\'t work -r 999';

// Placeholder for the original command string as we replace string arguments
let stringWithReplacedArgs = string

// Use `.match()` to extract an array of all string arguments
const stringArgs = string.match(/(".*?")/g)

// Loop over the array of string args and make sure they're replaced with the appropriate index in our replaced string
for (const [index, stringArg] of Object.entries(stringArgs)) {
	stringWithReplacedArgs = stringWithReplacedArgs.replace(stringArg, `{{${index}}}`)
}

// At this point we have a version of the command string that contains indices in place of the original string arguments, as well as an array of each of the original string arguments.
console.log('stringWithReplacedArgs', stringWithReplacedArgs)
console.log('stringArgs', stringArgs)





/****************************************\
  Example usage
\****************************************/

// Create an object to store all of our arguments and their values in. This will make the flags and arguments much easier to use later.
const argumentHash = {}

// Split the updated command string on spaces
const splitCommand = stringWithReplacedArgs.split(' ')

// Loop over the split command string and find arguments that should have string arguments
for (let index = 0; index < splitCommand.length; index++) {
  const flag = splitCommand[index]
  const nextArgument = splitCommand[index + 1]
  
  // If the next argument in the list starts with a hyphen, it's a flag, so we'll just set the property to true
  if (/^-/.test(nextArgument)) {
    argumentHash[flag.replace(/^-/)] = true
    
  // If the next argument DOESN'T start with a hyphen, let's assume it's a string value
  } else {
    argumentHash[flag.replace(/^-/)] = stringArgs[/{{(\d)}}/.exec(nextArgument)[1]]
  }
}

// Now we have an argument hash with all of our flags and arguments neatly packed up.
console.log(argumentHash)