Rust is a statically compiled, fast language with great tooling and a rapidly growing ecosystem. That makes it a great fit for writing command line applications: They should be small, portable, and quick to run. Command line applications are also a great way to get started with learning Rust; or to introduce Rust to your team!

Writing a program with a simple command line interface (CLI) is a great exercise for a beginner who is new to the language and wants to get a feel for it. There are many aspects to this topic, though, that often only reveal themselves later on.

This book is structured like this: We start with a quick tutorial, after which you’ll end up with a working CLI tool. You’ll be exposed to a few of the core concepts of Rust as well as the main aspects of CLI applications. What follows are chapters that go into more detail on some of these aspects.