CLI Guidelines – A guide to help you write better command-line programs

Re:CLI Guidelines – A guide to help you write better command... by alkonaut on Saturday December 05, 2020 @07:19PM (#25319740)

Is there a usage statistic for how often man pages are read? I violently agreed with the article here. There are zero times I wouldn’t rather switch to a browser. Even if I had to dig up my phone from my pocket and search for help there, I’d much rather do that.

Also, more and more tools are cross platform and man pages aren’t a thing on windows (are they?).

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Re:CLI Guidelines – A guide to help you write better command... by enriquto on Sunday December 06, 2020 @03:55AM (#25322149)

I don't have any statistic, but I use them all the time.

Under vim's default configuration, manpages are a single keypress away. If you press "K", vim opens a window with the manpage of the word under the cursor. It happens instantaneously, and it uses the same font and color scheme than your code. I would really hate it if it opened a browser!

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Re:CLI Guidelines – A guide to help you write better command... by mulmen on Sunday December 06, 2020 @03:16PM (#25326284)

Really? So if I make a man page for my CLI tool you would assault me physically?

You should take your own description of your beliefs as a red flag to reassess them.

I use a few tools that don’t have man pages and I always find it jarring that I have to leave the CLI to get some basic usage info.

There is already tooling to generate manages and online/html docs from a single source. Reasonable thing seems to be “do both”. I’m not persuaded by “Windows is leaking.”

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Re:CLI Guidelines – A guide to help you write better command... by alkonaut on Sunday December 06, 2020 @03:53PM (#25326523)

> So if I make a man page for my CLI tool you would assault me physically?

What, and ... what?

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Re:CLI Guidelines – A guide to help you write better command... by TheFlyingFish on Sunday December 06, 2020 @09:58PM (#25328932)

I think the previous comment was taking issue with your use of the word "violently."

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Re:CLI Guidelines – A guide to help you write better command... by alkonaut on Monday December 07, 2020 @01:47AM (#25329923)

I understood that. I wonder if they googled the expression afterwards so I don’t need to explain it?

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