3 ms·
Brevity is a particularly false saving here if you factor in the time it takes to lookup documentation on something you don't use just often enough to have its
by seemslegit 7y ago
Brevity is a particularly false saving here if you factor in the time it takes to lookup documentation on something you don't use just often enough to have its command line options sit in your brains L1 cache.
- jolmg 7y ago> the time it takes to lookup documentation on something you don't use just often enough Well, if I don't use it often, I'm not going to be looking at the documentation often. However, when I do, we're talking about the time it takes to type `man foo<enter>/bar<enter>`, where bar can be `keyword` or `--option\b`. That doesn't even take 30 secs.
- seemslegit 7y agothirty seconds and a context switch to a man window is a lifetime, compare with an environment where I just type utiltiy.<tab> autocomplete to 'option', have an inline documentation displayed under the line and a seamless choice box that allows me to choose from several valid values for that option while displaying inline documentation for what each means.
- jolmg 7y agoI don't feel that kind of friction with man, but ok. That environment you describe is also common. Though I don't use it, in zsh, if I hit tab, I get that menu with inline documentation you describe. What are you arguing for anyway?
- seemslegit 7y agothat argv doesn't cut it ?
- jolmg 7y agoWith that comment about a completion system with inline documentation? How does argv not cut it when zsh does what you described?
- seemslegit 7y agoBecause it's still crude and unstructured - my program still has to operate on an array of strings, and I need to author zsh completion and matching voodoo have it distributed and do the same for everyone's shell of choice whereas I would like to be able to export a struct definition and have my program receive it populated with user input instead of argv