[HN Gopher] Enter a command to see help text for each arg
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       Enter a command to see help text for each arg
        
       Author : dr_mork
       Score  : 89 points
       Date   : 2022-05-30 14:03 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (explainshell.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (explainshell.com)
        
       | dinkleberg wrote:
       | This is neat. Though when I ran a fairly simple ffmpeg command
       | through here to try and make sense of it, it was only semi-
       | useful. (Not a knock against this service, but just a testament
       | to the complexity of ffmpeg lol)
       | 
       | > ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libvpx-vp9 -crf 30 -b:v 2000k
       | output.webm
       | 
       | https://explainshell.com/explain?cmd=+ffmpeg+-i+input.mp4+-c...
       | 
       | It doesn't seem to know what to do with combined flags in this
       | case.
        
         | TacticalCoder wrote:
         | > (Not a knock against this service, but just a testament to
         | the complexity of ffmpeg lol)
         | 
         | I found a modified a ffmpeg shell script no later than
         | yesterday that finds all my movies files and generates one jpeg
         | with 16 "tiles" thumbnails for each movie to try to make sense
         | of the countless family "MOV40931.MOV" and whatnots and I've
         | got to say: I agree with you.
         | 
         | My big moment of solitude was when I started to work on
         | parallelizing my shell script only to realize that, of course,
         | _ffmpeg_ already makes good use of all the cores so there 's no
         | point in parallelizing the shell script.
        
       | rzmmm wrote:
       | The service is pretty neat. It's probably parsing the man pages
       | somehow to create this. I wonder if it would be possible to
       | utilize this parsed information to create type checking tools for
       | shell scripts... Something which checks if correct count of
       | arguments is given for command etc.
        
         | g_p wrote:
         | You can see how the parsing works in the source code (with a
         | specific high level explanation of how this part works), as the
         | site is an open source project.
         | 
         | https://github.com/idank/explainshell#how
        
       | mdtrooper wrote:
       | Old url, but it is awesome, thanks for remembers it me.
       | 
       | Is there a cli (offline) alternative?
        
         | uggabuggar wrote:
        
       | rjh29 wrote:
       | Doesn't understand "curl www.google.com", lol.
        
         | sureglymop wrote:
         | It does... Obviously "www.google.com" is not in the manpage.
        
         | 8organicbits wrote:
         | 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
        
       | po1nt wrote:
       | > true(1)
       | 
       | Translates to
       | 
       | "Do nothing, successfuly"
       | 
       | This tickles my imposter syndrome
        
       | girishso wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | djbusby wrote:
         | HN let's you add a favorite too
        
       | asicsp wrote:
       | 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_
        
       | stavros wrote:
       | This looks great! Is there a CLI utility that uses the site to do
       | the same, perhaps?
        
         | asicsp wrote:
         | 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
        
         | hnlmorg wrote:
         | Some shells have this built in, like Fish and my own one (
         | https://murex.rocks ) too
        
           | stavros wrote:
           | Fish has it? Which one is it? I use fish but I didn't know
           | that.
        
             | hnlmorg wrote:
             | It's on the front page: https://fishshell.com/
             | 
             | > Other shells support programmable completions, but only
             | fish generates them automatically by parsing your installed
             | man pages.
             | 
             | Fish isn't the only one though. In fact I'm not even sure
             | it was the first. But it's definitely the most mainstream
             | shell to support it.
        
       | avgcorrection wrote:
       | Imagine if a programming language had at least two compilation
       | targets from the start: machine code/byte code and prose.
        
         | Palomides wrote:
         | ran into this one recently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noweb
         | 
         | along with other related literate programming tools
        
         | PerryCox wrote:
         | 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"?
        
           | avgcorrection wrote:
           | The purpose (intent) wouldn't be explained, but it could be
           | useful for tools which have oddball syntax and are only used
           | sometimes (infrequent enough for you to forget).
        
         | _tom_ wrote:
         | The Lucene search library has something like this. Data is
         | stored /retrieved via codecs. Most write binary data, but one
         | codec actually writes out all data as text. It is, of course,
         | too slow for production use, but it is great for figuring out
         | what is going on under the covers.
         | 
         | https://blog.mikemccandless.com/2010/10/lucenes-simpletext-c...
        
         | everybodyknows wrote:
         | Nominated:                 go build       go doc -all
        
       | maest wrote:
       | I think this is supposed to be a fork bomb?
       | 
       | https://explainshell.com/explain?cmd=%3A%28%29%7B%20%3A%7C%3...
       | 
       | That's not clear at all from the explanation.
        
         | sureglymop wrote:
         | It seems to explain everything correctly though? Read through
         | and it should make sense why it is a fork bomb .
        
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       (page generated 2022-05-30 23:01 UTC)