Is it just me who finds this kind of diagnostic slightly overkill? I think for compilers it makes a lot of sense since the inputs are big text files, but getting 5 lines of diagnostic splat for 1 line of shell input is almost harder to read for me.
But the thing is, it is a helpful thing for people that learn. I know for me it is not only better. Before i could hardly understand the error message.
unix command lines get painfully dense, and can be hard to follow even if you’re writing them yourself.
i could also see this being useful in the case where you copy and paste a command line from someone else, eg, you paste a command line that uses BSD style flags or somesuch and don’t realize why it’s broken.
Would be rad if it could point at your actual command input, instead of duplicating the command in its own output. But I imagine that's probably super tricky. :)
Does anyone know why these kinds of tools often include colored strings like "help:" or "hint:" in their output? I get that there is some internal representation that might match that, but isn't all the output help and hints? What is the purpose of the label?
From a user pov, no. This is not help. It is the opposite. It is one of multiple things
The computer asking my help to understand what I wrote because it is bad at understanding complex communication
More work for me to understand the computer model and adapt to it
A pain because things do not work as I wanted.
4... I could keep going
As such, the "help" hint is a help into "how to get out of this pothole". The rest is "oh no, you are stuck in a pothole" from an emotional pov for the user.
eta | 18 hours ago
Is it just me who finds this kind of diagnostic slightly overkill? I think for compilers it makes a lot of sense since the inputs are big text files, but getting 5 lines of diagnostic splat for 1 line of shell input is almost harder to read for me.
Diana | 14 hours ago
Well then you can use the
neverflagBut the thing is, it is a helpful thing for people that learn. I know for me it is not only better. Before i could hardly understand the error message.
sloane | 13 hours ago
unix command lines get painfully dense, and can be hard to follow even if you’re writing them yourself.
i could also see this being useful in the case where you copy and paste a command line from someone else, eg, you paste a command line that uses BSD style flags or somesuch and don’t realize why it’s broken.
zesterer | 12 hours ago
Oh, neat! I did not expect ariadne to make it to places like this.
Fwiw, if the author sees this, ariadne also has a 'compact' mode which might be a better default for uutils: less padding space.
stephank | 11 hours ago
Would be rad if it could point at your actual command input, instead of duplicating the command in its own output. But I imagine that's probably super tricky. :)
zesterer | 11 hours ago
That would certainly need shell integration. Which would be neat, but not very unixey.
gignico | 30 minutes ago
Are there Rust crates helping with the rendering of these messages, or each tool is on its own? It may help with a tool I’m writing.
evmar | 6 hours ago
Does anyone know why these kinds of tools often include colored strings like "help:" or "hint:" in their output? I get that there is some internal representation that might match that, but isn't all the output help and hints? What is the purpose of the label?
Diana | 2 hours ago
From a user pov, no. This is not help. It is the opposite. It is one of multiple things
As such, the "help" hint is a help into "how to get out of this pothole". The rest is "oh no, you are stuck in a pothole" from an emotional pov for the user.