6 ms·

NoFAQ – A tool that corrects your console commands

21 points by based2 10y ago

fizzbatter 10y ago
A lot of these suggestion things are nifty - another one is a machine learning code helper (spots errors, identifies errors, etc). Not sure if this even has an api.. but i want it to. Despite that, my problem with them is that there's no way i'm going to send every failed command or all my code to some random 3rd party. It just isn't happening. I'd love for this thing to be a local install, and then i can pipe any command failures i have to it locally, and feel semi-secure about them. Really, i think i just need to bite the bullet and improve my understanding of the math behind ML (i'm terrible at math), and take a course or two on ML. I feel like there are so many opportunities for ML in your local life, that you would never ship off to a 3rd party. Hard to profit from, but seems great for open source projects. (Note, i didn't mean to imply that this site used ML at all.. the other code suggester service does.. and the two, from a UX perspective, feel similar to me)
- MBVaughn 10y ago
  Thanks for your feedback! Currently, we don't have an external API, for curation and server load reasons. Also, we want to be as transparent as possible about what data is collected - the current website is a wholly "opt-in" sort of design.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
throwanem 10y ago
I like that, in response to a name resolution failure in a ping command provided by the "See a random example" button, it suggested sudo rm -rf /* Maybe a little curation might be of value here?
- _lce0 10y ago
  Indeed curation is required, as an example you forgot to include .. --no-preserve-root ;)
  - amyjess 10y ago
    Using '/*' doesn't need --no-preserve-root. Only 'rm -rf /' needs it.
- 13of40 10y ago
  It seems like most people who are entering commands don't get what it's supposed to do, since most of the commands under "Help Fix Commands" are either malicious, don't have an associated error message, or both. Also, it seems like it's being a little bit racist about what a "console command" is, because it won't let me suggest... (dir -rec).FullName ...as a fix for... PS C:\> dir /s/b dir : Cannot find path 'C:\s\b' because it does not exist.
- 0xmohit 10y ago
  sudo chmod -R a-x / would work as is.
- MBVaughn 10y ago
  That's definitely in the works. I'm working on a reporting/curating functionality for "fix-requested" commands as well as for suggested fixes. I'm hoping to push that to the live environment as soon as possible.
0xmohit 10y ago
Not sure how well it works: - Suggested `ls` for `sl` despite the fact that the latter [0] is a wonderful utility. - `chomd` didn't yield any suggestion. Neither did `fskc`. A similar utility that actually helps is thefuck [1]. [0] https://github.com/mtoyoda/sl https://github.com/mtoyoda/sl [1] https://github.com/nvbn/thefuck https://github.com/nvbn/thefuck
- amyjess 10y ago
  Oddly enough, both of the points you bring up are handled perfectly by zsh's built-in correction. zsh will only suggest 'ls' for 'sl' if 'sl' isn't installed, and it'll catch 'fksc' and 'chomd'.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- kazinator 10y ago
  How well it works is: exactly to the extent that the crowd-sourced data is accurate. No more and no less. It is not reasonable to suggest "ls" for "sl". If we regard this as typo correction, we have to consider that no letter in the command is in the correct position. For typo correction to be plausible, it has to affect only some reasonable fraction of the command. The command has to be fairly long and the edit required to correct it has to be fairly small. E.g. showmnt -> showmount.
dimino 10y ago
I remember a nifty little python app called 'fuck', where you'd typo something, then type "fuck", and it'd take a guess at correcting it for you. Was pretty cool!
- throwanem 10y ago
  It's even cooler now! https://github.com/nvbn/thefuck https://github.com/nvbn/thefuck
- MBVaughn 10y ago
  Mr. Iakolev's tool helped inspire our work, actually! https://nofaq.cs.wisc.edu/about.html https://nofaq.cs.wisc.edu/about.html
nunull 10y ago
$ git pull origin master Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge: user.abcd.suo Suggestion: git rm --cached user.abcd.suo Wooaa, no! (Now your local changes are gone.)
- OJFord 10y ago
  And maybe that's desired. Or maybe it isn't. The main problem with this, as I see it, is the lack of knowledge of the user's intention. Without that, it's only good for total basics that built-in correction or 'thefuck' would handle. With that, well.. that's StackOverflow.
kazinator 10y ago
Needs a way to downvote bad data. Someone put in: Command: ls -l .bla Error: [ no output ] Suggestion: ls -lah .bla Is this real? Which environments have a Unix-like ls which refuses, without -a, to list an explicitly named entry which exists, but starts with a dot?
- MBVaughn 10y ago
  Flagging of bad data is currently in the pipeline. We hope to push the feature soon.
sedachv 10y ago
Warren Teitelman implemented a rule-based command correction facility in BBN Lisp in the 1960s (https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6905 https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6905) that later became known as DWIM in InterLisp (http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/interlisp-d/3100186-Interlisp_Oct83.pdf/view http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/interlisp-...). It was notorious for introducing weird errors: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.misc/hBQ1autWqlI/IL0TYoHljXEJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.misc/hBQ1autWqlI/I.... There is also an anecdote about it deleting files in ESR's Hacker's Dictionary (http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/D/DWIM.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/D/DWIM.html) that seems to be ESR's made up bullshit - the syntax is wrong, the anecdote is not in the old jargon file, and also the fact that Interlisp had undelete. A lot of people seemed to have liked the facility though.
jscheel 10y ago
This definitely needs some cleanup. I like the idea, but the suggested fix for "git remote" is "sudo rm -rf /". Thankfully it doesn't have --no-preserve-root, but still..
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

21 points by based2 10y ago

A lot of these suggestion things are nifty - another one is a machine learning code helper (spots errors, identifies errors, etc). Not sure if this even has an api.. but i want it to. Despite that, my problem with them is that there's no way i'm going to send every failed command or all my code to some random 3rd party. It just isn't happening. I'd love for this thing to be a local install, and then i can pipe any command failures i have to it locally, and feel semi-secure about them. Really, i think i just need to bite the bullet and improve my understanding of the math behind ML (i'm terrible at math), and take a course or two on ML. I feel like there are so many opportunities for ML in your local life, that you would never ship off to a 3rd party. Hard to profit from, but seems great for open source projects. (Note, i didn't mean to imply that this site used ML at all.. the other code suggester service does.. and the two, from a UX perspective, feel similar to me)

MBVaughn 10y ago
Thanks for your feedback! Currently, we don't have an external API, for curation and server load reasons. Also, we want to be as transparent as possible about what data is collected - the current website is a wholly "opt-in" sort of design.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

throwanem 10y ago

I like that, in response to a name resolution failure in a ping command provided by the "See a random example" button, it suggested sudo rm -rf /* Maybe a little curation might be of value here?

_lce0 10y ago
Indeed curation is required, as an example you forgot to include .. --no-preserve-root ;)
- amyjess 10y ago
  Using '/*' doesn't need --no-preserve-root. Only 'rm -rf /' needs it.
13of40 10y ago
It seems like most people who are entering commands don't get what it's supposed to do, since most of the commands under "Help Fix Commands" are either malicious, don't have an associated error message, or both. Also, it seems like it's being a little bit racist about what a "console command" is, because it won't let me suggest... (dir -rec).FullName ...as a fix for... PS C:\> dir /s/b dir : Cannot find path 'C:\s\b' because it does not exist.
0xmohit 10y ago
sudo chmod -R a-x / would work as is.
MBVaughn 10y ago
That's definitely in the works. I'm working on a reporting/curating functionality for "fix-requested" commands as well as for suggested fixes. I'm hoping to push that to the live environment as soon as possible.

0xmohit 10y ago

Not sure how well it works: - Suggested `ls` for `sl` despite the fact that the latter [0] is a wonderful utility. - `chomd` didn't yield any suggestion. Neither did `fskc`. A similar utility that actually helps is thefuck [1]. [0] https://github.com/mtoyoda/sl https://github.com/mtoyoda/sl [1] https://github.com/nvbn/thefuck https://github.com/nvbn/thefuck

amyjess 10y ago
Oddly enough, both of the points you bring up are handled perfectly by zsh's built-in correction. zsh will only suggest 'ls' for 'sl' if 'sl' isn't installed, and it'll catch 'fksc' and 'chomd'.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
kazinator 10y ago
How well it works is: exactly to the extent that the crowd-sourced data is accurate. No more and no less. It is not reasonable to suggest "ls" for "sl". If we regard this as typo correction, we have to consider that no letter in the command is in the correct position. For typo correction to be plausible, it has to affect only some reasonable fraction of the command. The command has to be fairly long and the edit required to correct it has to be fairly small. E.g. showmnt -> showmount.

dimino 10y ago

I remember a nifty little python app called 'fuck', where you'd typo something, then type "fuck", and it'd take a guess at correcting it for you. Was pretty cool!

throwanem 10y ago
It's even cooler now! https://github.com/nvbn/thefuck https://github.com/nvbn/thefuck
MBVaughn 10y ago
Mr. Iakolev's tool helped inspire our work, actually! https://nofaq.cs.wisc.edu/about.html https://nofaq.cs.wisc.edu/about.html

nunull 10y ago

$ git pull origin master Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge: user.abcd.suo Suggestion: git rm --cached user.abcd.suo Wooaa, no! (Now your local changes are gone.)

OJFord 10y ago
And maybe that's desired. Or maybe it isn't. The main problem with this, as I see it, is the lack of knowledge of the user's intention. Without that, it's only good for total basics that built-in correction or 'thefuck' would handle. With that, well.. that's StackOverflow.

kazinator 10y ago

Needs a way to downvote bad data. Someone put in: Command: ls -l .bla Error: [ no output ] Suggestion: ls -lah .bla Is this real? Which environments have a Unix-like ls which refuses, without -a, to list an explicitly named entry which exists, but starts with a dot?

MBVaughn 10y ago
Flagging of bad data is currently in the pipeline. We hope to push the feature soon.

sedachv 10y ago

Warren Teitelman implemented a rule-based command correction facility in BBN Lisp in the 1960s (https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6905 https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6905) that later became known as DWIM in InterLisp (http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/interlisp-d/3100186-Interlisp_Oct83.pdf/view http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/interlisp-...). It was notorious for introducing weird errors: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.misc/hBQ1autWqlI/IL0TYoHljXEJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.misc/hBQ1autWqlI/I.... There is also an anecdote about it deleting files in ESR's Hacker's Dictionary (http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/D/DWIM.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/D/DWIM.html) that seems to be ESR's made up bullshit - the syntax is wrong, the anecdote is not in the old jargon file, and also the fact that Interlisp had undelete. A lot of people seemed to have liked the facility though.

jscheel 10y ago

This definitely needs some cleanup. I like the idea, but the suggested fix for "git remote" is "sudo rm -rf /". Thankfully it doesn't have --no-preserve-root, but still..

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]