Re: verifying syntax for optional and replaceable content in man pages

From: Robert P. J. Day <rpjday@crashcourse.ca>
Date: May 30, 2018, 18:08 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.2.21.1805301405200.9810@localhost.localdomain>
In-Reply-To: <CAGZ79kbdbV8r6Vr06ECOy9XXnBO_r=F-XcQU3WCCtOuCr0cfiQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, 30 May 2018, Stefan Beller wrote:

Show 20 quoted lines

> On Wed, May 30, 2018 at 4:39 AM, Robert P. J. Day <rpjday@crashcourse.ca> wrote:
> >
> >   willing to submit some patches to standardize the syntax of man
> > pages in terms of rendering "optional" and/or "replaceable"
> > content, and it seems like "man git-config" would be a good place
> > to start:
> >
> > SYNOPSIS
> >        git config [<file-option>] [type] [--show-origin] [-z|--null] name [value [value_regex]]
> >        git config [<file-option>] [type] --add name value
> >        git config [<file-option>] [type] --replace-all name value [value_regex]
> >        ...snip ...
> >
> >   can i assume the proper (uniform) syntax for the above would be
> > (shortening lines):
> >
> >   ... [<type>] [--show-origin] [-z|--null] <name> [<value> [<value_regex>]]
>
> So the difference are the angle brackets around 'name', otherwise no
> change?

  more precisely, angle brackets would represent any "replaceable"
content, regardless of where it occurs.

>
> >   ... [<type>] --add <name> <value>
>
> all the same but angle brackets around name and value,

  same rationale as above, [<...>] would represent both optional *and*
replaceable content. and so on, and so on.

  the only other obvious inconsistency i've seen is, when referring to
an environment variable, i've seen both of:

  `VARIABLE`
  `$VARIABLE`

my personal preference is the one without the $ if just referring to the variable, without trying to dereference it. but that's just me.

rday

-- 
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Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
                  http://crashcourse.ca/dokuwiki

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