Validate Player Order Files

Use cli parse orders to check one or more order files for syntax errors before running a turn. The command parses each file, reports accepted order counts and any diagnostics, and exits with a non-zero status if problems are found.

Prerequisites

• The cli binary is built and on your path.
• You have one or more order files submitted by players (plain text, UTF-8).

Validate a single file

cli parse orders orders-empire1.txt

Clean output looks like:

orders-empire1.txt: 14 orders, 0 diagnostics

Validate multiple files at once

Pass all files as arguments:

cli parse orders orders-empire1.txt orders-empire2.txt orders-empire3.txt

Each file is reported separately:

orders-empire1.txt: 14 orders, 0 diagnostics
orders-empire2.txt: 9 orders, 0 diagnostics
orders-empire3.txt: 12 orders, 0 diagnostics

Read the diagnostics

When a file contains errors, the command prints each diagnostic indented below the file summary with the line number, diagnostic code, and a human-readable message:

orders-empire4.txt: 3 orders, 4 diagnostics
  line 5 [unknown_command]: unrecognized command "frobnicator"
  line 7 [syntax]: build change requires <colonyID> <groupNo> <unitKind>
  line 10 [unterminated_quote]: unterminated quoted string
  line 12 [invalid_value]: assemble: invalid unit kind "hyper-engine": "hyper-engine" requires a tech-level suffix (e.g. hyper-engine-1)

Valid orders in the same file are still counted — the parser does not stop at the first error.

Check the exit status

The command exits with status 1 if any file had read errors or diagnostics. Use this in a script to gate turn processing:

if cli parse orders orders-*.txt; then
    echo "all orders clean"
else
    echo "fix errors before running the turn"
fi

Diagnostic codes