Arista Networks, Inc.

Peter Rufer

Hua Zhong

Diego Asturias

Sharad Birmiwal

Akshay K Gattani

Zeqing Xia

Techniques for implementing an improved command line interface (CLI) are provided. In certain embodiments, this improved CLI can provide a CLI command definition language that enables developers, users, and/or other entities to define CLI commands in a straightforward and flexible manner, create optimized parse graphs based on the CLI command definitions, and employ an efficient algorithm for traversing a parse graph at, e.g., CLI runtime in order to parse an input text string and match that string to a valid CLI command.

Techniques for implementing a command line interface

A method and system for efficiently processing command line interface (CLI) instructions on a network element. Specifically, the disclosed method and system analyze CLI statements to determine whether a given CLI statement should be processed by a command specific sub-agent or a non-specific sub-agent. The presence of a bypass statement included in the CLI statement may indicate that the CLI statement should be processed by a command specific sub-agent to reduce the computational load of executing the command specified by the CLI statement. The presence of a regular statement, rather than a bypass statement, in the CLI statement may indicate that the CLI statement should be processed by a nonspecific sub-agent. Processing of a CLI statement that includes a bypass statement may be expedited by bypassing generic runtime processes performed by a nonspecific sub-agent.

Method and system for efficiently processing command line interface (CLI) instructions on a network element

A method and system for processing commands on a network device. The method may include instantiating a command execution back end that includes a parser, an activity thread, and a command execution server thread; receiving a connection; instantiating a command execution front end including a controlling terminal; detecting the instantiation of the command execution front end; creating a connection thread including an input communication channel, an output communication channel, an error communication channel, and a thread local working directory; receiving signal socket information, arguments socket information, connection environment information, a user identifier, a group identifier; a name of the controlling terminal, and a connection type; receiving additional command execution information; receiving a command; sending the command from the command execution front end to the connection thread; parsing the command using the parser; executing the parsed command to obtain a result; and providing the result to the command execution front end.

Growing community of inventors

Palo Alto, CA, United States of America

Peter Rufer