export `ansi_string()`

[multimeric]

I'm looking for a way to take an existing character vector with ANSI control codes and treat it as a cli_ansi_string object. Now I could do this by just setting the class of the vector, but I would prefer using a public function for this. ansi_string seems to have some other encoding logic in it too. Internally it seems that you use ansi_string() to do this. Could this become part of the public API?

[gaborcsardi]

We could do that. The caveat is that cli does not handle all ANSI control codes, and right now ansi_string objects only contain ANSI codes that it supports. If you can mark arbitrary strings as ansi_string objects, then that's not necessarily true any more. But I don't think this is a big danger, so we can do this. Do you want to submit a PR? No pressure at all, just asking. 😄

[multimeric]

The caveat is that cli does not handle all ANSI control codes, and right now ansi_string objects only contain ANSI codes that it supports. If you can mark arbitrary strings as ansi_string objects, then that's not necessarily true any more.

I take your point, but even with some missing functionality I think there will still be a better user experience when using an ansi_string object over the character class if it contains any ANSI codes. The big difference is the use of cat to print it out which is a strict improvement. Won't that just delegate the ANSI printing to the user's terminal?

Do you want to submit a PR? No pressure at all, just asking.

Yep, happy to.

[gaborcsardi]

Sure, the class will get you the printing. But it is a very fragile class, and it is very easy to lose it:

❯ col_red("foobar")
<cli_ansi_string>
[1] foobar

❯ c(col_red("foobar"))
[1] "\033[31mfoobar\033[39m"

Which is something that we just need to accept.