8 ms·

Show HN: how2 – stackoverflow.com from the terminal

272 points by csantini 11y ago

danso 11y ago
Nice! Installed it and will now make it part of all the computers I use. I found this funny: > It uses Google and Stackoverflow APIs, because Stackoverflow search on its own doesn't works as well. It doesn't really make sense why Google would be a better entrance point into StackOverflow's content -- but it is -- as I imagine the Google algorithm uses SO's API itself to incorporate SO's data into pagerank in some way (the tags, the points, etc.)...OTOH, after landing on a particular question via Google, if it isn't the thing I actually need, I find SO's list of related questions to almost always be on point.
- csantini 11y ago
  Try Stackexchange search, it never gets you what you are looking for, they are just using some kind of Elastic Search. I think Google instead indexes SO pages as any html, and does a much better job at figuring out what "unzip .bz2" means.
  - forgotpwtomain 11y ago
    Google ignores special characters though - that makes it really hard to search for some things.
    - zuck9 11y ago
      Not always. Since a year or two, I'm seeing they take into account many special characters: https://www.google.com/search?q= https://www.google.com/search?q=. https://www.google.com/search?q=.bz2 https://www.google.com/search?q=.bz2 and https://www.google.com/search?q=bz2 https://www.google.com/search?q=bz2 are different, for instance.
    - chatmasta 11y ago
      I think google flags accounts as programmers and treats their searches differently. If I'm logged out of Google, searching for programming questions sometimes leads to sites on completely unrelated topics. Whereas when I'm logged into my account, from which 99% of my searches are programming intensive, I get all relevant programming results.
      - JupiterMoon 11y ago
        Google does this with all areas of interest. Politics, knitting, cat videos, programming etc. Sometimes it is useful sometimes it will re-enforce an echo chamber effect.
- oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
  IME, Google's search is better than 99.9% of internal site searches.
  - dogweather 11y ago
    Which is weird because a site's designers _know_ which parts of the content are relevant.
    - Domenic_S 11y ago
      I don't think it's weird at all. Google has some of the brightest search minds and years of experience; an site's team is lucky to have someone on staff who even knows what porter-stemming is.
      - dogweather 11y ago
        Ok, true. I've personally found that I can kick Google's butt simply because Google cannot trust the site's creator. This puts them at a big disadvantage right out of the gate.
    - flashman 11y ago
      It's not that weird. I know what content is on my site, but fuzzy matching the vast variety of input strings is non-trivial to do well. (Emphasis on 'to do well' because there are a lot of ways to get it working but poorly.)
- mc_hammer 11y ago
  it does though, google uses clicks as a weight for the sorting algo. so they can tell the last click for a question.. hopefully the working answer.
Mizza 11y ago
Or the more mature 'howdoi' - https://github.com/gleitz/howdoi https://github.com/gleitz/howdoi
- csantini 11y ago
  howdoi beahaves in a very different way. It doesn't give you unix.stackexchange.com answers by default: $ howdoi unzip bz2 readcsvbz2file <- read.csv(bzfile("file.csv.bz2")) how2 switches API depending on what language you are querying.
  - danso 11y ago
    It's also much nicer looking and more interactive, FWIW...I also agree with its defaults. $ howdoi inverse grep a file Simply pops this up: $ grep -L "foo" * ...apparently it scrapes the answer result and print the last occurrence of code-formatted text. Whereas `how2` pretty-prints the entire answer, narrative and code, so I know what the respondent was actually addressing. FWIW, both tools don't address what I want (I was thinking `grep -v`)...but that's not a fault of the tools, but of the ambiguity in how we ask questions. `howdoi` has far more faith in there being "Just One Answer"...where `how2` let's you move very quickly between the relevant choices, giving you the right amount of context to navigate. Well done OP!
    - gnufied 11y ago
      Uh oh, ~> howdoi parse json python {"maps":[{"id":"blabla","iscategorical":"0"}, {"id":"blabla","iscategorical":"0"}], "masks":{"id":"valore"}, "om_points":"value", "parameters":{"id":"valore"} } Yep can't agree more.
    - metakermit 11y ago
      You can also get the whole answer in `howdoi` by passing the `-a` flag: howdoi -a inverse grep a file Even basic syntax highlighting is supported using `-c`.
      - 11y ago
GordonS 11y ago
At first, I thought 'why2'?! But then I saw the video, the way you can specify a language, and the nice format that results are displayed in, along with the option to see more options - this is actually quite nice! It would be good to have the option to use it with Server Fault (also from StackExchange network) too.
amelius 11y ago
How does it perform the natural language processing in the search? Or does it rely on stackoverflow for that?
- csantini 11y ago
  it uses Google. Because stackoverflow doesn't give you what you want.
skoczymroczny 11y ago
Does it know how to parse HTML using regexes?
- csantini 11y ago
  Not yet.
brudgers 11y ago
Over the long run, if I'm living in the terminal rather than the browser, I probably will be better off learning to be effective finding help via `man` pages rather than taking on a dependency on a latent network connection and "possibly" relevant content...and node and npm and javascript. In the short run, a tool like this may make it easier to get to the point where I am living in the terminal.
- mixmastamyk 11y ago
  man can't help with many/most? languages. Though I agree a node dependency on lean computers is too much.
calebm 11y ago
The next logical step is stackoverflow-powered code generation :)
- ihuman 11y ago
  This already exists: https://gkoberger.github.io/stacksort/ https://gkoberger.github.io/stacksort/
astazangasta 11y ago
My first reaction ("Wowza!") was tempered by the fear that this sort of intervening layer may erode participation (and thus quality) of Stack Overflow. I suppose such a thing will never be popular enough to make this sort of effect.
anthk 11y ago
apropos
chishaku 11y ago
Very nice. I much prefer this to howdoi. A couple suggestions: Does the `-l lang` flag correspond to stackoverflow tags which aren't necessarily limited to languages? This should be specified because the right tag can significantly increase the quality of search results. Also, it would be nice to have a keyboard shortcut that opens a question/answer in the browser. That way I can easily vote.
- csantini 11y ago
  I'm not currently using tags, thank you for the suggestion. Not sure is available in the SO api, I'll check. The keyboard shortcut is not hard to add. You could do it yourself :P
haphazardeous 11y ago
Saw this earlier this morning but just had to use it and boom! It worked perfectly. I really like the idea of using things on the console and the user interface is nice and sleek. would love to see this getting even better over time!
andrepd 11y ago
Awesome! It would be great if I could use it to query any stackexchange site, like TeX, for instance. Like `how2 prevent table from floating -s tex` would search on tex.se
- csantini 11y ago
  Actually that answer would be on tex.stackexchange.com. http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/2275/keeping-tables-figures-close-to-where-they-are-mentioned http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/2275/keeping-tables-f... I'm not supporting this yet, let's see if I can make it work so that it uses also other stackexchange.com domains. Thanks for the suggestion!
  - na85 11y ago
    I believe tex.stackexchange.com is what GP meant by "tex.se", as in "tex.StackExchange"
redwards510 11y ago
This is awesome! I have one burning question though: what is the proper -l lang parameter to use for Windows consoles? I tried: how2 -l windows enable tab completion and got nothing. "PowerShell" and "batch" bring back results, but I am drawing a blank on what to call the Windows Shell (cmd.exe). Thanks!
- vadskye 11y ago
  "how2 -l cmd change directory" works for me. "how2 -l cmd enable tab completion" still returns nothing, though; I think that's just a query it can't answer. (A quick manual search returned totally unhelpful results, so I wouldn't blame how2 for that...)
uxcn 11y ago
Text web browsers also make a lot of stuff like this reasonably easy inside a terminal. Someone mentioned http://elinks.or.cz/ http://elinks.or.cz/ a while ago.
jimmyppi 11y ago
Another alternative that just searches google (or bing if you want to go crazy) and extracts commands from the search hits: https://github.com/jimmyppi/searchcmd https://github.com/jimmyppi/searchcmd $ searchcmd "unzip bz2" ..... tar xjvf (michaelangela.wordpress.com, superuser.com) bunzip2 filename.bz2 (cyberciti.biz, linuxquestions.org) tar xvjf filename.tar.bz2 (superuser.com) bzip2 -d filename.bz2 (superuser.com) bzip2 -dk filename.bz2 (superuser.com)
parsethis 11y ago
loving this! helps me stay in the terminal

272 points by csantini 11y ago

danso 11y ago

Nice! Installed it and will now make it part of all the computers I use. I found this funny: > It uses Google and Stackoverflow APIs, because Stackoverflow search on its own doesn't works as well. It doesn't really make sense why Google would be a better entrance point into StackOverflow's content -- but it is -- as I imagine the Google algorithm uses SO's API itself to incorporate SO's data into pagerank in some way (the tags, the points, etc.)...OTOH, after landing on a particular question via Google, if it isn't the thing I actually need, I find SO's list of related questions to almost always be on point.

csantini 11y ago
Try Stackexchange search, it never gets you what you are looking for, they are just using some kind of Elastic Search. I think Google instead indexes SO pages as any html, and does a much better job at figuring out what "unzip .bz2" means.
- forgotpwtomain 11y ago
  Google ignores special characters though - that makes it really hard to search for some things.
  - zuck9 11y ago
    Not always. Since a year or two, I'm seeing they take into account many special characters: https://www.google.com/search?q= https://www.google.com/search?q=. https://www.google.com/search?q=.bz2 https://www.google.com/search?q=.bz2 and https://www.google.com/search?q=bz2 https://www.google.com/search?q=bz2 are different, for instance.
  - chatmasta 11y ago
    I think google flags accounts as programmers and treats their searches differently. If I'm logged out of Google, searching for programming questions sometimes leads to sites on completely unrelated topics. Whereas when I'm logged into my account, from which 99% of my searches are programming intensive, I get all relevant programming results.
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      Google does this with all areas of interest. Politics, knitting, cat videos, programming etc. Sometimes it is useful sometimes it will re-enforce an echo chamber effect.
oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
IME, Google's search is better than 99.9% of internal site searches.
- dogweather 11y ago
  Which is weird because a site's designers _know_ which parts of the content are relevant.
  - Domenic_S 11y ago
    I don't think it's weird at all. Google has some of the brightest search minds and years of experience; an site's team is lucky to have someone on staff who even knows what porter-stemming is.
    - dogweather 11y ago
      Ok, true. I've personally found that I can kick Google's butt simply because Google cannot trust the site's creator. This puts them at a big disadvantage right out of the gate.
  - flashman 11y ago
    It's not that weird. I know what content is on my site, but fuzzy matching the vast variety of input strings is non-trivial to do well. (Emphasis on 'to do well' because there are a lot of ways to get it working but poorly.)
mc_hammer 11y ago
it does though, google uses clicks as a weight for the sorting algo. so they can tell the last click for a question.. hopefully the working answer.

Mizza 11y ago

Or the more mature 'howdoi' - https://github.com/gleitz/howdoi https://github.com/gleitz/howdoi

csantini 11y ago
howdoi beahaves in a very different way. It doesn't give you unix.stackexchange.com answers by default: $ howdoi unzip bz2 readcsvbz2file <- read.csv(bzfile("file.csv.bz2")) how2 switches API depending on what language you are querying.
- danso 11y ago
  It's also much nicer looking and more interactive, FWIW...I also agree with its defaults. $ howdoi inverse grep a file Simply pops this up: $ grep -L "foo" * ...apparently it scrapes the answer result and print the last occurrence of code-formatted text. Whereas `how2` pretty-prints the entire answer, narrative and code, so I know what the respondent was actually addressing. FWIW, both tools don't address what I want (I was thinking `grep -v`)...but that's not a fault of the tools, but of the ambiguity in how we ask questions. `howdoi` has far more faith in there being "Just One Answer"...where `how2` let's you move very quickly between the relevant choices, giving you the right amount of context to navigate. Well done OP!
  - gnufied 11y ago
    Uh oh, ~> howdoi parse json python {"maps":[{"id":"blabla","iscategorical":"0"}, {"id":"blabla","iscategorical":"0"}], "masks":{"id":"valore"}, "om_points":"value", "parameters":{"id":"valore"} } Yep can't agree more.
  - metakermit 11y ago
    You can also get the whole answer in `howdoi` by passing the `-a` flag: howdoi -a inverse grep a file Even basic syntax highlighting is supported using `-c`.
    - 11y ago

GordonS 11y ago

At first, I thought 'why2'?! But then I saw the video, the way you can specify a language, and the nice format that results are displayed in, along with the option to see more options - this is actually quite nice! It would be good to have the option to use it with Server Fault (also from StackExchange network) too.

amelius 11y ago

How does it perform the natural language processing in the search? Or does it rely on stackoverflow for that?

csantini 11y ago
it uses Google. Because stackoverflow doesn't give you what you want.

skoczymroczny 11y ago

Does it know how to parse HTML using regexes?

csantini 11y ago
Not yet.

brudgers 11y ago

Over the long run, if I'm living in the terminal rather than the browser, I probably will be better off learning to be effective finding help via `man` pages rather than taking on a dependency on a latent network connection and "possibly" relevant content...and node and npm and javascript. In the short run, a tool like this may make it easier to get to the point where I am living in the terminal.

mixmastamyk 11y ago
man can't help with many/most? languages. Though I agree a node dependency on lean computers is too much.

calebm 11y ago

The next logical step is stackoverflow-powered code generation :)

ihuman 11y ago
This already exists: https://gkoberger.github.io/stacksort/ https://gkoberger.github.io/stacksort/

astazangasta 11y ago

My first reaction ("Wowza!") was tempered by the fear that this sort of intervening layer may erode participation (and thus quality) of Stack Overflow. I suppose such a thing will never be popular enough to make this sort of effect.

anthk 11y ago

apropos

chishaku 11y ago

Very nice. I much prefer this to howdoi. A couple suggestions: Does the `-l lang` flag correspond to stackoverflow tags which aren't necessarily limited to languages? This should be specified because the right tag can significantly increase the quality of search results. Also, it would be nice to have a keyboard shortcut that opens a question/answer in the browser. That way I can easily vote.

csantini 11y ago
I'm not currently using tags, thank you for the suggestion. Not sure is available in the SO api, I'll check. The keyboard shortcut is not hard to add. You could do it yourself :P

haphazardeous 11y ago

Saw this earlier this morning but just had to use it and boom! It worked perfectly. I really like the idea of using things on the console and the user interface is nice and sleek. would love to see this getting even better over time!

andrepd 11y ago

Awesome! It would be great if I could use it to query any stackexchange site, like TeX, for instance. Like `how2 prevent table from floating -s tex` would search on tex.se

csantini 11y ago
Actually that answer would be on tex.stackexchange.com. http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/2275/keeping-tables-figures-close-to-where-they-are-mentioned http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/2275/keeping-tables-f... I'm not supporting this yet, let's see if I can make it work so that it uses also other stackexchange.com domains. Thanks for the suggestion!
- na85 11y ago
  I believe tex.stackexchange.com is what GP meant by "tex.se", as in "tex.StackExchange"

redwards510 11y ago

This is awesome! I have one burning question though: what is the proper -l lang parameter to use for Windows consoles? I tried: how2 -l windows enable tab completion and got nothing. "PowerShell" and "batch" bring back results, but I am drawing a blank on what to call the Windows Shell (cmd.exe). Thanks!

vadskye 11y ago
"how2 -l cmd change directory" works for me. "how2 -l cmd enable tab completion" still returns nothing, though; I think that's just a query it can't answer. (A quick manual search returned totally unhelpful results, so I wouldn't blame how2 for that...)

uxcn 11y ago

Text web browsers also make a lot of stuff like this reasonably easy inside a terminal. Someone mentioned http://elinks.or.cz/ http://elinks.or.cz/ a while ago.

jimmyppi 11y ago

Another alternative that just searches google (or bing if you want to go crazy) and extracts commands from the search hits: https://github.com/jimmyppi/searchcmd https://github.com/jimmyppi/searchcmd $ searchcmd "unzip bz2" ..... tar xjvf (michaelangela.wordpress.com, superuser.com) bunzip2 filename.bz2 (cyberciti.biz, linuxquestions.org) tar xvjf filename.tar.bz2 (superuser.com) bzip2 -d filename.bz2 (superuser.com) bzip2 -dk filename.bz2 (superuser.com)

parsethis 11y ago

loving this! helps me stay in the terminal