Enter a command to see help text for each arg

#1

Post by dr_mork » Mon, May 30, 2022, 2:03 PM UTC

Enter a command to see help text for each arg
explainshell.com

Re: Enter a command to see help text for each arg

#2

Post by stavros » Mon, May 30, 2022, 2:32 PM UTC

This looks great! Is there a CLI utility that uses the site to do the same, perhaps?

Re: Enter a command to see help text for each arg

#3

Post by asicsp » Mon, May 30, 2022, 2:48 PM UTC

stavros wrote: post #2

This looks great! Is there a CLI utility that uses the site to do the same, perhaps?

I wrote a Linux CLI tool [0] that parses the man/help pages to extract option details. Works most of the time for me, but there are plenty of corner cases that don't work.

[0] https://github.com/learnbyexample/command_help

Re: Enter a command to see help text for each arg

#4

Post by asicsp » Mon, May 30, 2022, 2:51 PM UTC

Some of the past discussions:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24525999 63 points, Sept 2020, 12 comments

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19124480 329 points, Feb 2019, 52 comments

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6834791 1372 points, Dec 2013, 171 comments

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6296634 275 points, Aug 2013, 82 comments

Re: Enter a command to see help text for each arg

#5

Post by mdtrooper » Mon, May 30, 2022, 3:03 PM UTC

Old url, but it is awesome, thanks for remembers it me.

Is there a cli (offline) alternative?

Re: Enter a command to see help text for each arg

#6

Post by rjh29 » Mon, May 30, 2022, 3:03 PM UTC

Doesn't understand "curl www.google.com", lol.

Re: Enter a command to see help text for each arg

#7

Post by 8organicbits » Mon, May 30, 2022, 3:38 PM UTC

rjh29 wrote: post #6

Doesn't understand "curl www.google.com", lol.

Looks like a reasonable response based on the man page, although it could be better.

https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/curl.1.html

Re: Enter a command to see help text for each arg

#8

Post by avgcorrection » Mon, May 30, 2022, 3:38 PM UTC

Imagine if a programming language had at least two compilation targets from the start: machine code/byte code and prose.

Re: Enter a command to see help text for each arg

#9

Post by PerryCox » Mon, May 30, 2022, 4:17 PM UTC

avgcorrection wrote: post #8

Imagine if a programming language had at least two compilation targets from the start: machine code/byte code and prose.

This is a really neat idea! I wonder how close you could get the prose to actually explaining the codes purpose as opposed to just saying "this is a for loop"?

Re: Enter a command to see help text for each arg

#10

Post by girishso » Mon, May 30, 2022, 4:24 PM UTC

Every couple of months I need this and can’t remember it’s name! So good to come across this again. Now on I’ll go through my hn comments.