Command prefixes are unnecessarily case-sensitive

[CraveToCode]

Prefixes for commands need not be case-sensitive. Feels to be unnecessary input-validation. Case-insensitive prefixes would be more user-friendly, as it does not seem like there is currently a need for case-sensitiveness. Future prefixes could easily be created to be unique content-wise compared to existing prefixes.

Could be medium severity if user is not tech-savvy.

[nus-pe-bot]

Team's Response

Future prefixes could easily be created to be unique content-wise compared to existing prefixes.

I believe allowing for case flexibility restricts us in the number of possible prefixes that could be used in the future. If the application scale up and we end up having a large amount of commands, starting from a point where it is case inflexible makes it detrimental to the user. In the case we need to revert to a case-inflexible system of prefixes to accommodate more prefixes, it would be a nightmare to the user to switch.

Furthermore, it doesn't seem like a chore to the users using CLI. Compare it to using flag args in the command line for applications. flags (similar to prefixes in this case) are meant to be case sensitive. Try running git reset --soft vs git reset --SOFT. The one with caps would give you an error showing that it is not recognised.

Hence, we believe this behavior is justified.

Items for the Tester to Verify

❓ Issue response

Team chose [response.Rejected]

• I disagree

Reason for disagreement: The terminology prefix itself carries the meaning that upper-case is allowed. E.g. M for Mega and G for Giga. It is not abnormal to expect capital prefixes to be valid.

Thus, it is normal to expect that users might input upper-case prefixes. Given this possibility, removing case-sensitivity would greatly improve user typing speed and efficiency. In any case, making prefixes case sensitive, is inherently a bad approach. E.g. using n for name and N for NOK_NAME is an extremely unintuitive approach that might result in plenty of errors on the user side.

Even if the application does scale up to a large amount of commands, there are more than sufficient prefixes available.

• Single letter prefixes = 26
• Double letter prefixes = 26P2 = 650 (P refers to permutate)
• Triple letter prefixes = 26P3 = 15600

As shown above, even with limiting to 2 letter prefixes, there are over 600 permutations, and when you consider triple letter combinations, you have 15000+ permutations. Case sensitiveness to include more prefix permutations is unnecessary here. Even if the application were to somehow exhaust double letter prefixes, that would mean that it has 600+ commands in it. This suggests that there is a bigger problem at hand, as there is no feasible way for users to remember 600+ CLI based inputs for a task management/address book app.

Additional reference on 2103 stance on case-sensitivity:

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