do you have a favourite man page?
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do you have a favourite man page? thinking of writing a short blog post exploring man pages and what makes a good one and I'd love some more examples
my contribution: I think it's cool that `man curl` includes an example for every single option
@b0rk I don't believe to have a favourite. Yet, due to the rule (rather 'tip') "'Select' Isn't Broken", select(2) and the corresponding story behind the tip from the book "Pragmatic Programmer" comes to my mind :)
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@b0rk I do like it too, even thought it makes the man page 7195 lines long 😃 .
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do you have a favourite man page? thinking of writing a short blog post exploring man pages and what makes a good one and I'd love some more examples
my contribution: I think it's cool that `man curl` includes an example for every single option
@b0rk my favourite was an early version of less(1), whose one-line synopsis was:
less - better than more(1)
Which it was, because you could go _backwards_... that was the first program I ever compiled from downloaded source.
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do you have a favourite man page? thinking of writing a short blog post exploring man pages and what makes a good one and I'd love some more examples
my contribution: I think it's cool that `man curl` includes an example for every single option
I think my favourite man page example so far is this rsync man page (via @shnizmuffin) https://download.samba.org/pub/rsync/rsync.1
it gives examples BEFORE giving an exhaustive list of options!
the synopsis just says "rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [DEST]" instead of giving you an exhaustive list of options like "-ABCFGHILOPRSTUWabcdefghiklmnopqrstuvwxy1%"!
there's an "OPTION SUMMARY" section that gives you a 1-line summary of each option! (this feels SO SO much useful than the normal SYNOPSIS to me)
(2/?)
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do you have a favourite man page? thinking of writing a short blog post exploring man pages and what makes a good one and I'd love some more examples
my contribution: I think it's cool that `man curl` includes an example for every single option
@b0rk it's also my favourite hairstyle
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@b0rk i always think
hier(7)is really neat@pounce that's cool, I'd never seen that
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@shnizmuffin what do you like about it? (also: you mean this one right? https://linux.die.net/man/1/rsync)
i like that it takes a different approach to the SYNOPSIS and puts examples before the comprehensive list of all options, I haven't seen that a lot
@b0rk It leads with examples from most common to least common, and sorts its many options following similar logic.
It's basically ...
1. WTF am I looking at. (--verbose et al)
2. Sensible defaults (--archive)
3. How do I change one thing (--no-OPTION)
4. Filepath stuff
5. Link stuff
6. Permission stuff
7. File metadata stuff
8. Config stuff
9. Filter stuff
10. Shit one person needed once
11. --human-readable
12. please don't run forever
13. --version, --help -
I think my favourite man page example so far is this rsync man page (via @shnizmuffin) https://download.samba.org/pub/rsync/rsync.1
it gives examples BEFORE giving an exhaustive list of options!
the synopsis just says "rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [DEST]" instead of giving you an exhaustive list of options like "-ABCFGHILOPRSTUWabcdefghiklmnopqrstuvwxy1%"!
there's an "OPTION SUMMARY" section that gives you a 1-line summary of each option! (this feels SO SO much useful than the normal SYNOPSIS to me)
(2/?)
@b0rk @shnizmuffin if something needs a solid man page, it's probably rsync. :D
Destroyer of files.
With great power comes great responsibility. -
do you have a favourite man page? thinking of writing a short blog post exploring man pages and what makes a good one and I'd love some more examples
my contribution: I think it's cool that `man curl` includes an example for every single option
@b0rk@jvns.ca i often work offline, so i like long and elaborate man pages that go into every absurd detail but also note in-program help mechanisms
nvimbecause it provides a jump start to:Tutorand:help quickrefzshallbecause it explains All the syntax
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do you have a favourite man page? thinking of writing a short blog post exploring man pages and what makes a good one and I'd love some more examples
my contribution: I think it's cool that `man curl` includes an example for every single option
@b0rk In the attention to detail category, the BUG detailed in the NetBSD sleep(1) man page is a favourite:
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@b0rk It leads with examples from most common to least common, and sorts its many options following similar logic.
It's basically ...
1. WTF am I looking at. (--verbose et al)
2. Sensible defaults (--archive)
3. How do I change one thing (--no-OPTION)
4. Filepath stuff
5. Link stuff
6. Permission stuff
7. File metadata stuff
8. Config stuff
9. Filter stuff
10. Shit one person needed once
11. --human-readable
12. please don't run forever
13. --version, --help@shnizmuffin i didn’t even notice the option sorting, that’s so good
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@b0rk i always think
hier(7)is really neat -
@b0rk the one I've used the most is `man bash`, because it's not just a man page, it's the documentation for the whole scripting language!
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@thatandromeda I have a hard time with them too, that's why I've been thinking about this
@b0rk @thatandromeda Often I pipe the output of `man` into `less`, then try to search for something like -n, which returns way too many results (e.g. mentions of that option before its definition). I wonder if a better `man` could be made that would let me search through an *index* of options instead of doing a full-text search.
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do you have a favourite man page? thinking of writing a short blog post exploring man pages and what makes a good one and I'd love some more examples
my contribution: I think it's cool that `man curl` includes an example for every single option
@b0rk Why were example usages shunned by many man pages I'll never understand.
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@technicaladept @nabnux i think for bash specifically I might prefer to use the html bash reference manual to reference the docs https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bash.html (which I believe has the same content but with better formatting)
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I think my favourite man page example so far is this rsync man page (via @shnizmuffin) https://download.samba.org/pub/rsync/rsync.1
it gives examples BEFORE giving an exhaustive list of options!
the synopsis just says "rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [DEST]" instead of giving you an exhaustive list of options like "-ABCFGHILOPRSTUWabcdefghiklmnopqrstuvwxy1%"!
there's an "OPTION SUMMARY" section that gives you a 1-line summary of each option! (this feels SO SO much useful than the normal SYNOPSIS to me)
(2/?)
@b0rk Special shout out to the official web address, since it's got hyperlinks on all the options:
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I think my favourite man page example so far is this rsync man page (via @shnizmuffin) https://download.samba.org/pub/rsync/rsync.1
it gives examples BEFORE giving an exhaustive list of options!
the synopsis just says "rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [DEST]" instead of giving you an exhaustive list of options like "-ABCFGHILOPRSTUWabcdefghiklmnopqrstuvwxy1%"!
there's an "OPTION SUMMARY" section that gives you a 1-line summary of each option! (this feels SO SO much useful than the normal SYNOPSIS to me)
(2/?)
@b0rk @shnizmuffin Count on Apple to f*ck things up:
NAME
openrsync – synchronise local and remote filesSYNOPSIS
openrsync [-0468BCDEFHILOPRSTWVabcdefghiklmnopqrtuvxyz] [-e program]
[-f filter] [--address=sourceaddr] [--append]
[--backup-dir=directory] [--bwlimit=limit]
[--cache | --no-cache] [--etc.
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do you have a favourite man page? thinking of writing a short blog post exploring man pages and what makes a good one and I'd love some more examples
my contribution: I think it's cool that `man curl` includes an example for every single option
false (8) is my favourite
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@courtcan that recommendation just put it on my list. Thanks!
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#Quicksy is getting an unusually high amount of registrations from Russia and the US. I wonder if these two countries have something in common.
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@matt I didn't say it was often. It's just more often than finding real serious bugs. It's mostly things like, "it assumed I wanted to keep backward compatibility with an old API endpoint, even though there are no consumers of the old API and killing old code is actually a benefit".
I'm not convinced it's writing more bugs than I would have written in the same amount of code or that my bugs are more likely to be caught in review. I don't write 100% test coverage for any of my projects...
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@swelljoe If the LLM misunderstands that often when doing code review, then it could also misunderstand in the direction of letting legitimate bugs through, right?
Sounds to me like we're lowering the bar on quality because business people, in response to what AI boosters are selling, are demanding that we pump out more and more, faster and faster.
I mean, do what you have to do to hold onto your job, but I think I'll keep resisting as long as I can.
