CommandLine.setSeparator() is ignored when generating usage text.

[defnull]

Title says it all. A call to cmd.usage(system.err) will print the default or annotated separator and ignores the value set by cmd.setSeparator("XXX").

[remkop]

Thanks for looking at picocli.

You are correct. This behaviour is documented in the user manual.
Please see http://picocli.info/#_option_parameter_separators and http://picocli.info/#_custom_separators

Basically, the setSeparator is for the parser only, not for the usage help message.
Declaratively setting a separator via annotations like @Command(separator = ":") impacts both the usage help message and the parser.

The idea was to allow users to separately control the usage help and the parser separator.

[remkop]

I realize now that this could be confusing, but on the other hand I would like to support allowing users to separately control the usage help and the parser separator.

I just saw that the javadoc on CommandLine.setSeparator is not very explicit about this. I will improve the javadoc.

I hope that will be sufficient, what do you think?

[remkop]

Updated the javadoc.
Closing this issue; please reopen if more work is required.

[remkop]

I have come to my senses after realizing I could not think of any scenario where it would be useful for users to have a different separator in the parser and the usage help. The current behaviour is just confusing.

I will make changes such that the separator set programmatically via CommandLine.setSeparator will be reflected in the usage help message. If different separator values are specified declaratively (in @Command(separator="xxx") and programmatically, the programmatically set value will be used.