Video IDs starting with dash = 'unknown option' error
Closed this issue · 4 comments
Fantastic script!
Have been backing up my video comments with it and discovered that video IDs prefixed with a dash are mistaken as a group of short flag options and result in an error.
The command:
npx youtube-comment-scraper "-e5PICdUp44"
Results in the error message:
error: unknown option '-e'
Upon investigation I found that a solution is to add an option terminator:
npx youtube-comment-scraper -- "-e5PICdUp44"
Just wanted to note this here for anyone else writing scraper scripts like myself.
For future reference though, the culprit is in node_modules\commander\index.js
in the Command.prototype.normalize
function, where the short flag split occurs.
@BenjaminNelan Thanks, this is the expected behaviour and has been brought up before.
As per the POSIX specification, the double dash (--
) terminates the list of command line options and needs to be used when command line arguments start with a dash. The quotes around the video ID are optional.
See #19
@philbot9 Ah nuts, I should've checked closed issues. Sorry for the repeat!