Linux @lemmy.ml 𞋴𝛂𝛋𝛆 @lemmy.world 3w ago

Is there an easy way to filter all terminal commands that contain a --help flag?

Or is there maybe a way to set the pager for all help related queries to some command? I'm using bat and would like to pipe all --help through | bat --language=help by default for the syntax highlighting and colored output... Or if you know a lower effort way to color the output of --help let me know.

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23 comments

I think your best bet to to create a script called help and run "help <command>" and the script would do the rest.
- I think this is the correct answer in all honesty. Create a new script like help (or man2 or whatever) that pipes the argument through bat for you.
- There has to be a hook somewhere for every command that executes. I'm not sure, but something in the chain after using set -x then running any terminal command likely is on the right path to doing this. (If you try set -x, you can turn it off with set +x). set -o options are another I'm not very familiar with but might be related.
  
  set -x configures the running process, your shell. This is a posix standard flag. See https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap02.html
  
  there has to be a hook somewhere for every command that executes
  
  Why do think this? I'm not aware of any shells that have such a feature. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but it would be a new feature.
  
  I like the other suggestion of having a wrapper script that does what you need.
  
  I don't mind the idea of a wrapper it is just that most of the time, I'm looking at the last command, backspacing and then adding --help. After thinking about it, I will likely go the wrapper route, but add arguments that use the last command in terminal history automatically so that typing help- with no args runs a --help flag on that last command, 2::5 would add additional flags or arguments from the last command before --help and help- with any other args calls those instead of using history.
  
  That should obviously be help!! like with sudo
  
  You'd be intercepting all commands just to verify if they have a help flag and then if not executing them as they were intended. If the intercept got broke, then the shell would be completely broken.

23 comments