Poll about -h,--help options
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Hi, Is it interesting to know if people expect -h to work as a --help equivalent by default? As it directly affects best practices of using Python in command line, can we run such poll on python.org? I thought that this stuff is obvious, but it appears that it is not, so I'd like to see this usability study - it will be interesting for the Python community to know itself better. -- anatoly t.
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On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 9:40 AM, anatoly techtonik <techtonik@gmail.com>wrote:
I hate typing "-h" only to find that just "--help" works. I'm pretty sure it's obvious and standard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command-line_interface#Built-in_usage_help Yuval Greenfield
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On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 11:40 PM, anatoly techtonik <techtonik@gmail.com> wrote:
The argparse and optparse modules in the standard library expose help via both -h and --help by default (and this is in the Python documentation and in the help strings generated by those modules), so I would expect Python users at least to be familiar with both invocations: http://docs.python.org/2/library/optparse.html#generating-help http://docs.python.org/2/library/argparse.html#add-help --Chris
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On 18.02.13 08:40, Anatoly Techtonik wrote:
Polls are funny. Why not :-? In the gnu world (at least) appending " -h" MAY for some tools result in output transformed to "human-readable", ie. tools like ls, du or df all support the -h triggers meaning "human readable" output options. Asking for help or versions seems to be not a global priority ;-) All the best, Stefan.
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On 2/18/2013 2:40 AM, anatoly techtonik wrote:
Is it interesting to know if people expect -h to work as a --help equivalent by default?
Of course. Given that it already does for python itself " -? -h --help Print a short description of all command line options. " and at least some of its modules with a command line interface, I am not sure what you are getting at. If some python module is deficient, report it on the tracker. If you think the opt/argparse docs should say more than they do, make a suggestion here, but be prepared to accept a decision to not add anything, on the basis that it is mostly our policy to not tell people how to use Python. (PEP 8 is a style guide for the stdlib, and for other stuff only as people decide to use it.)
I have no idea what you are referring to, but if some other software is deficient, take it up with the authors. -- Terry Jan Reedy
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anatoly techtonik <techtonik@gmail.com> writes:
Is it interesting to know if people expect -h to work as a --help equivalent by default?
There are too many existing tools that make use of ‘-h’ for other things (e.g. “hostname to connect to”) for me to expect it to mean “help” by default. If I'm expecting an option to be a short name for “help”, it would be ‘-?’. -- \ “One bad programmer can easily create two new jobs a year. | `\ Hiring more bad programmers will just increase our perceived | _o__) need for them.” —David Lorge Parnas, 1999-03 | Ben Finney
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On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 9:40 AM, anatoly techtonik <techtonik@gmail.com>wrote:
I hate typing "-h" only to find that just "--help" works. I'm pretty sure it's obvious and standard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command-line_interface#Built-in_usage_help Yuval Greenfield
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On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 11:40 PM, anatoly techtonik <techtonik@gmail.com> wrote:
The argparse and optparse modules in the standard library expose help via both -h and --help by default (and this is in the Python documentation and in the help strings generated by those modules), so I would expect Python users at least to be familiar with both invocations: http://docs.python.org/2/library/optparse.html#generating-help http://docs.python.org/2/library/argparse.html#add-help --Chris
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On 18.02.13 08:40, Anatoly Techtonik wrote:
Polls are funny. Why not :-? In the gnu world (at least) appending " -h" MAY for some tools result in output transformed to "human-readable", ie. tools like ls, du or df all support the -h triggers meaning "human readable" output options. Asking for help or versions seems to be not a global priority ;-) All the best, Stefan.
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On 2/18/2013 2:40 AM, anatoly techtonik wrote:
Is it interesting to know if people expect -h to work as a --help equivalent by default?
Of course. Given that it already does for python itself " -? -h --help Print a short description of all command line options. " and at least some of its modules with a command line interface, I am not sure what you are getting at. If some python module is deficient, report it on the tracker. If you think the opt/argparse docs should say more than they do, make a suggestion here, but be prepared to accept a decision to not add anything, on the basis that it is mostly our policy to not tell people how to use Python. (PEP 8 is a style guide for the stdlib, and for other stuff only as people decide to use it.)
I have no idea what you are referring to, but if some other software is deficient, take it up with the authors. -- Terry Jan Reedy
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anatoly techtonik <techtonik@gmail.com> writes:
Is it interesting to know if people expect -h to work as a --help equivalent by default?
There are too many existing tools that make use of ‘-h’ for other things (e.g. “hostname to connect to”) for me to expect it to mean “help” by default. If I'm expecting an option to be a short name for “help”, it would be ‘-?’. -- \ “One bad programmer can easily create two new jobs a year. | `\ Hiring more bad programmers will just increase our perceived | _o__) need for them.” —David Lorge Parnas, 1999-03 | Ben Finney
participants (7)
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anatoly techtonik
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Ben Finney
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Chris Jerdonek
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Stefan Drees
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Steven D'Aprano
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Terry Reedy
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Yuval Greenfield