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Here's another good idea coming from the #curl user survey:

Support "curl -h --insecure" etc to output the manpage section for the --insecure command line option in the terminal. Should be possible to work with either long or short versions of command line options.

github.com/curl/curl/pull/1399…

Open for grabs!


TODO: -h option by bagder · Pull Request #13990 · curl/curl

Support "curl -h --insecure" etc to output the manpage section for the --insecure command line option in the terminal. Should be possible to work with either long or short versions of command line ...
GitHub
#curl
in reply to daniel:// stenberg://

Mark Eichin
Mark Eichin
• •
Neat, I've used --explain for that (in obscure/private code) but just having -h do it seems a lot more discoverable
in reply to daniel:// stenberg://

daniel:// stenberg://
daniel:// stenberg://
• •

aaaand here's a draft implementation:

github.com/curl/curl/pull/1399…


curl: --help [option] displays documentation for given cmdline option by bagder · Pull Request #13997 · curl/curl

First shot. The extracting of the help texts is still a little crude: because we typically have 270KB of text zlib compressed into a single blob, we have to scan for the text to show. As of now, I ...
GitHub
in reply to daniel:// stenberg://

Michael Boelen
Michael Boelen
• •

Nice!

Did you consider adding a help command instead of an option? The option --help now is playing an active role to help the user, but does not influence an actual HTTP request

For Lynis I created a helper "show help", that well, shows help. Without any command, it will give the output as in the screenshot.

Crazy idea: create helper that allows fuzzy search. So "curl help head" will report about --head, but also the relevant lines about doing a HEAD request.

screenshot of Lynis showing help
in reply to Michael Boelen

daniel:// stenberg://
daniel:// stenberg://
• •

No, a separate command would lose a lot of the benefit I think because this provides help for the command you obviously already have.

Fuzzy or crazy search is better left for the actual manpage or at least separate work.

in reply to daniel:// stenberg://

Michael Boelen
Michael Boelen
• •
It makes sense, at the same time confuses me a bit. When I use two options with a program, I expect them to fine-tune the action it is about to take. Like --head --verbose will change the request type from GET to HEAD, yet gives me more verbose output. That makes sense. While -h is not influencing the actual HTTP request or behavior, but instead a hard interrupt to show information. Not what I would expect if I would see the command written on a blog post, for example.
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