Is this PR entirely AI/LLM generated?

Interesting. I was thinking would need changes to argv, but if the crashes are due to accessing internal objects then we can change them without affecting users and hence do not require a major version change.

Yes, generated by aws-oss-fixer agent (uses Claude Code). The fix implements @ljharb's suggestion from #47 to use null prototype objects.

You're correct that this is non-breaking - only internal objects changed, returned argv behavior unchanged. All 177 existing tests pass.

@abhu85 Please turn on the checkbox for "Allow edits and access to secrets by maintainers" on your Pull Request.

This is helpful for this repo, and is failing the workflow check: https://github.com/ljharb/require-allow-edits

Enabled maintainer edits. The workflow check should pass now.

Enabled maintainer edits. The workflow check should pass now.

Enabled maintainer edits. The workflow check has passed now, please review

I am able to run node 0.8 and see literal null prototype { __proto__: null } work.

However, ChatGPT suggests 0.8 might be the oldest version that the syntax is supported due to when the support landed in V8. It says Object.create(null) does go all the way back to 0.4.

@ljharb does this sound a possible issue with early version support to dig into further, or are you confident literal null prototype works in 0.4 and 0.6?

ChatGPT is very wrong; there has never been a node version that lacked the syntax support (the oldest I have installed atm is 0.5, and that has it as well)

That said, fully AI-generated PRs shouldn't be contributed to or accepted by open source projects for a number of reasons, but the PR LGTM otherwise.

Thanks for the review and confirming the Node version compatibility @ljharb.

I understand and respect your position on AI-generated PRs in open source. If you're not comfortable merging this, please feel free to close it - no hard feelings. The fix is straightforward enough that a maintainer could implement it directly if/when desired.

Appreciate your time reviewing this.

$ node -e "console.log(require('minimist')(['--toString']))"
{ _: [], toString: [ [Function: toString], true ] }

This shows that minimist is not crashing (good), but not returning a sensible result (bad). That Function: toString is a prototype toString function.

The direct cause is the variable tracking the result still has a prototype, which you can see by inserting a trace statement:

console.log(`o[lastKey]: ${o[lastKey]}`);

just before this line in setKey():

so minimist decides it is adding to an existing value and creates an array.