-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: RIPEMD160 Scully, William P wrote: | <rant> | Is it just me? Don't you find the syntax descriptions of Linux commands | hard to understand because they're not written with so-called "railroad | diagrams"? I don't know who invented the railroad scheme, but I | certainly credit IBM (and others) for adopting the layout. If I'm force | into early retirement someday I think that'll be my hobby: Re-editing | Linux doc so it can be unequivocally read and understood by ordinary | humans. | </rant> |
*shrug* I've never had problems with either notation. Most of the unix world is used to the man one, it works for them, so there must be something they're doing right. "man man" might explain things, and believe it or not, there *are* standards. Extremely simplified, whenever something is in square brackets, it's optional; it's the "lower side" of the RR notation. Whenever something is excluding something else, you have two examples and one line shows an example with one xor option, and another one the other xor option. Which conveniently gives space to distinctly point out which additional (optional) arguments go along with either of the options. Exactly the same as RR. As for defaults, they're usually documented. Unless, it's a bug in the documentation and one should report it as such. So you have the "upper side" of the railroad covered as well, just a bit differently. One wants to be able to read a bit more on each option anyways, and that's no different in any notation. What's an entire leap in convenience is the fact "man" notation is a lot more friendly to teletype terminals. It consumes less space at no additional cost. Sometimes, you might even get more information. Example: $ /sbin/lvdisplay --help ~ lvdisplay: Display information about a logical volume lvdisplay ~ [-a|--all] ~ [-c|--colon] ~ [-d|--debug] ~ [-h|--help] ~ [--ignorelockingfailure] ~ [-m|--maps] ~ [--nosuffix] ~ [-P|--partial] ~ [--units hsbkmgtHKMGT] ~ [-v|--verbose] ~ [--version] ~ [LogicalVolume[Path] [LogicalVolume[Path]...]] lvdisplay --columns|-C ~ [--aligned] ~ [-a|--all] ~ [-d|--debug] ~ [-h|--help] ~ [--ignorelockingfailure] ~ [--noheadings] ~ [--nosuffix] ~ [-o|--options [+]Field[,Field]] ~ [-O|--sort [+|-]key1[,[+|-]key2[,...]]] ~ [-P|--partial] ~ [--segments] ~ [--separator Separator] ~ [--unbuffered] ~ [--units hsbkmgtHKMGT] ~ [-v|--verbose] ~ [--version] ~ [LogicalVolume[Path] [LogicalVolume[Path]...]] What is evident here? Basically, it's blatantly obvious you have two major modes. One is column-formatted and the other one is not. Obviously, due to space constraints imposed by column formatting, some options that can be specified in the other format, go away. Likewise, some additional options are there for the column format because there are space constraints which make certain display modes exclusive to each other, whereas the other mode includes them by default. Etc. In brutally short terms though, nobody's going to lead you by your hand. You're *expected* to use the shit and learn from what you've done. There's good docs, but like it or not, that's a lot less than one half of the job. Pragmatically, if one has a need for a command to behave exactly the way they need it to, it doesn't matter what else could be there. One looks it up and one uses it. Thank Bob, we have the option. Kind regards, - -- ~ Grega Bremec ~ gregab at p0f dot net -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFFwT0vfu4IwuB3+XoRA6VHAJ0WX7cZAFNHh2Kn1XbTYkbnUPYjLwCeJWta rFVMNsEKcKz36AVEsPqSJ70= =fwWz -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
