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0 pointsskissane8y ago0 comments

Define a standard format for describing command syntax. I'd suggest basing it on JSON, but you could use XML or Protobuf or Thrift or ASN.1 or Sexprs or whatever. Embed in executables a section containing the command syntax description object. Now when I type in a command, the shell finds the executable on the path, opens it, locates the command description syntax section (if present), and if found uses that to provide tab completion, online help, smarter syntax checking, whatever–if you've ever used OS/400, it has a feature where it constructs a fill-in-form dialog based on the command syntax descriptions, which you can call up at the press of a function key. (Obviously the shell should cache this data, it shouldn't reread /bin/ls every time I type "ls".)

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jstimpfle8y ago

There isn't a 1:1 mapping of binaries to documentation or completion scripts. That idea won't work out.

"Defining a standard format" hasn't been a successful practice in the Unix world. Many standards consist essentially of the bare minimum that everybody can agree with.

Unix command-line interfaces are already structured (as a list of strings), and more structure would be hard to support at the binary level. There are too many possibilities of doing that, and most CLI programs wouldn't even need that.

yorwba8y ago

If the binary is using one of a few common libraries, e.g. GNU getopt, to read its command-line parameters, it should be possible to extract somewhat useful completions automatically.

Then you are essentially relying on the de-facto standard of not rolling your own argument parsing, as opposed to some product of a standards committee.

johnny228y ago

fish shell does it with manpages https://fishshell.com/docs/current/commands.html#fish_update...

jstimpfle8y ago

Getopt is just barely flexible enough to be applicable to many projects while still encoding some conventions (dash-prefixed options and optional arguments).

Still it's too opinionated to be applicable to all programs. And it's by far not structured enough to support automated completions.

Every programmer goes through this phase of trying to abstract what can't be abstracted. Essentially for non-trivial programs you need to encode what you want yourself. You can't write a library that is suitable for the infinitely many thinkable programs.

By the way, even handcoded completions are, often enough, more confusing than helpful to me (and not because they are handcoded). I've disabled them entirely.

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solidsnack90008y ago

This is actually a very interesting problem. The format would be an IDL, since you're describing a "struct" of options, array-valued fields, and "typed" fields that are constrained to certain grammars (numbers, &c.).

ams61108y ago

This sort of exists. The command syntax format is the standard man page "Usage" and "Options" sections, and an implementation is docopt (http://docopt.org/)

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointsskissane8y ago0 comments

0 comments

jstimpfle8y ago

There isn't a 1:1 mapping of binaries to documentation or completion scripts. That idea won't work out.

"Defining a standard format" hasn't been a successful practice in the Unix world. Many standards consist essentially of the bare minimum that everybody can agree with.

yorwba8y ago

If the binary is using one of a few common libraries, e.g. GNU getopt, to read its command-line parameters, it should be possible to extract somewhat useful completions automatically.

Then you are essentially relying on the de-facto standard of not rolling your own argument parsing, as opposed to some product of a standards committee.

johnny228y ago

fish shell does it with manpages https://fishshell.com/docs/current/commands.html#fish_update...

jstimpfle8y ago

Getopt is just barely flexible enough to be applicable to many projects while still encoding some conventions (dash-prefixed options and optional arguments).

Still it's too opinionated to be applicable to all programs. And it's by far not structured enough to support automated completions.

By the way, even handcoded completions are, often enough, more confusing than helpful to me (and not because they are handcoded). I've disabled them entirely.

1 more reply

solidsnack90008y ago

ams61108y ago

This sort of exists. The command syntax format is the standard man page "Usage" and "Options" sections, and an implementation is docopt (http://docopt.org/)

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse