Aliases for limited_options in Thor

Question

I want to ask the user for input in Thor but have aliases:

$ Is this correct?: [yes, no, maybe] (yes)

Currently I have this:

class CLI < Thor
  desc 'do_thing', 'does a thing'
  def do_thing      
    answer = ask("Is this correct?", limited_to: %w{yes no maybe}, default: 'yes')
    # do stuff
  end
end

I would like the user to enter just the first letter of each option.

But I get this response:

$ Your response must be one of: [yes, no, maybe]. Please try again.

Answer 1

You cannot add aliases to ask as the answer will be matched directly against the list of options provided in limited_to. Source

If you really want this functionality your best bet would be skip the limited_options and instead check the answer after the fact and respond accordingly e.g.

class MyCLI  < Thor
  desc 'do_thing', 'does a thing'
  def do_thing      
    answer = ask("Is this correct? (Y)es/(N)o/(M)aybe:", default: 'Y')
    unless %w(y n m yes no maybe).include?(answer.downcase)
      puts "[#{answer}] is an invalid option. Please try again."
      send(__method__)
    end 
    puts answer
  end
end

Example:

Is this correct? (Y)es/(N)o/(M)aybe: (Y) Test 
[Test] is an invalid option. Please try again.
Is this correct? (Y)es/(N)o/(M)aybe: (Y) Yes 
Yes

If you want to use the built in limited options then you could use something like this but in my opinion this is not as appealing when represented in the CLI:

class CLI < Thor
  desc 'do_thing', 'does a thing'
  def do_thing      
    answer = ask("Is this correct? (Y)es/(N)o/(M)aybe", limited_to: %w{y n m}, default: 'y', case_insensitive: true)
  end
end

Which will output as:

Is this correct? (Y)es/(N)o/(M)aybe [y,n,m] (y)