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startup message could mention apropos or `?"..."` for text search #37523

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tpapp opened this issue Sep 11, 2020 · 9 comments · May be fixed by #37851
Open

startup message could mention apropos or `?"..."` for text search #37523

tpapp opened this issue Sep 11, 2020 · 9 comments · May be fixed by #37851

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@tpapp
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@tpapp tpapp commented Sep 11, 2020

Recent discussions on Discourse suggest that not all users know about apropos (or equivalently, using ?"..." for text search). The startup message currently mentions

Type "?" for help, "]?" for Pkg help.

I suggest that text search is added to this, but I am still looking for a compact way of phrasing it.

@fredrikekre
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@fredrikekre fredrikekre commented Sep 11, 2020

It could be added to the the help help:

help?> help

  Welcome to Julia 1.5.1. The full manual is available at

  https://docs.julialang.org

  as well as many great tutorials and learning resources:

  https://julialang.org/learning/

  For help on a specific function or macro, type ? followed by its name, e.g. ?cos, or ?@time, and press enter. Type ; to enter shell mode, ] to enter package mode
@KristofferC
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@KristofferC KristofferC commented Sep 11, 2020

No one reads that though.

@tpapp
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@tpapp tpapp commented Sep 11, 2020

What about adding to ?help, and also

Type ? for help, ?"..." for text search,
?help for more options, ]? for Pkg help.

Quotes removed as nesting them would be confusing.

@tpapp
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@tpapp tpapp commented Sep 28, 2020

I don't think that a lot of Julia users would look at man pages, as typically Julia docs are not there.

@Moelf Moelf linked a pull request that will close this issue Oct 2, 2020
@mcabbott
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@mcabbott mcabbott commented Oct 2, 2020

Type ? for help, ?"..." for text search,
?help for more options, ]? for Pkg help.

Typing ? and typing ?help seem to produce identical results, mentioning both seems confusing.

The page they bring up has type ? followed by its name, e.g. ?cos, or ?@time which seems clearer than the rather cryptic ?"..." to me.

Edit --- In fact that's not hinting where to put the function name, it's hinting that with literal quotes this is a way of running apropos("reverse") without having to spell it. TIL. But that does seem pretty cryptic! That seems, IMO, a great thing to explain in a sentence or two of the page you get from typing ?.

help?> "reverse"
Base.reverseind
Base.reverse!
Base.reenable_sigint
Base.printstyled
Base.escape_string
Base.bitreverse
...
@ashwani-rathee
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@ashwani-rathee ashwani-rathee commented Oct 13, 2020

@mcabbott @tpapp @apparluk can I take this issue and work on it??

@tpapp
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@tpapp tpapp commented Oct 13, 2020

I think that #37851 already fixes this, just needs to be merged.

@ashwani-rathee
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@ashwani-rathee ashwani-rathee commented Oct 13, 2020

Thanks @apparluk for directing me,well actually it was for hacktoberfest.....but why not be in good books of the people and work that interest me :) ?I think I'll check the #37646 and then move on to more specific packages that interest me like juliaimages and dsp

@baggepinnen
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@baggepinnen baggepinnen commented Dec 12, 2020

The docstring for apropos could mention the shorthand help?> "string" version as well, I use apropos all the time but just learned about this shorthand <3

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