https://www.thinkulum.net/w/index.php?action=history&feed=atom&title=Software_Development%2FCommand_Line_Help 2026-05-05T04:54:24Z Revision history for this page on the wiki MediaWiki 1.37.1 https://www.thinkulum.net/w/index.php?title=Software_Development/Command_Line_Help&diff=391&oldid=prev 2019-02-22T05:48:02Z

<p>Added the article.</p> <p><b>New page</b></p><div>Traditional command-line programs are run from the OS command line, and their help statement is called a usage message. On Unix-like OSes they may also have a man (manual) page. I'll talk about man pages in the &quot;Project documentation&quot; section.<br /> <br /> Python has the &lt;code&gt;cmd&lt;/code&gt; module for creating a command-line interpreter within your program, and each of your program's commands can also have a help message, contained in the command function's docstring.<br /> <br /> My snippets for scripts and command functions will include outlines for usage and help messages.<br /> <br /> == Usage message ==<br /> <br /> * [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_message Usage message - Wikipedia]<br /> * [http://courses.cms.caltech.edu/cs11/material/general/usage.html How to write usage statements - CS 11 - Caltech]<br /> * [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17314872/shell-scripts-conventions-to-write-usage-text-for-parameters Shell scripts: conventions to write usage text for parameters? - Stack Overflow]<br /> * [https://github.com/docopt/docopt docopt (Python implementation)] - A library that checks the user's command line arguments by parsing the script's usage message. Even if you're not using docopt, it gives you a convenient set of conventions for formatting usage messages.<br /> * [https://docs.python.org/3/library/argparse.html argparse - Python.org] - Moves in the opposite direction from docopt, generating a usage message from a specification.<br /> <br /> == Command help ==<br /> <br /> I haven't found any conventions for &lt;code&gt;cmd&lt;/code&gt; help text, and the examples I've seen have been free-form descriptions. Maybe it would make sense to treat each command as a separate program and use usage message conventions for its help.<br /> <br /> [[Category:Programming]]<br /> [[Category:Essays]]<br /> [[Category:Developing]]</div>

Andy Culbertson