Page MenuHome GnuPG

advertise the ? option in CLI
Closed, ResolvedPublic

Description

Apparently ? is an option in some contexts, such as key generation. I cannot
find any mention of this in the documentation, at least not easily.

The users that need "?" the most, are also users that typically won't read
through all of the documentation. So, the ability to use "?" should be noted
somewhere more obvious.

For example, this could be added to the man page section for --gen-key and
addkey which is currently quite sparse. Alternatively, this could be mentioned
at the start of key generation.

Details

Version
2.1.0

Event Timeline

Using a question mark on prompts is a common behaviour for at least 35 years.
Thus one can expect that.

Really, which prompts are those?

$ sh
$ ?
sh: 1: ?: not found
$
127

$ ed
?
?
1

$ bash
$ ?
bash: ?: command not found
127

$ zsh
% ?
zsh: no matches found: ?
%
1

$ man man
?
Pattern not found (press RETURN)

$ bc
bc 1.06.95
Copyright 1991-1994, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
For details type `warranty'.
?
(standard_in) 1: illegal character: ?

$ gdb
GNU gdb (Debian 7.7.1+dfsg-3) 7.7.1
Copyright (C) 2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Type "show copying"
and "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "x86_64-linux-gnu".
Type "show configuration" for configuration details.
For bug reporting instructions, please see:
http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/.
Find the GDB manual and other documentation resources online at:
http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/documentation/.
For help, type "help".
Type "apropos word" to search for commands related to "word".
(gdb) ?
Undefined command: "". Try "help".
(gdb) quit

Fuck, even vi tells me "type :help<Enter> or <F1> for on-line help"

$ python
Python 2.7.8 (default, Sep 9 2014, 22:08:43)
[GCC 4.9.1] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

?

File "<stdin>", line 1
  ?
  ^

SyntaxError: invalid syntax

$ ghci
GHCi, version 7.6.3: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ :? for help
Loading package ghc-prim ... linking ... done.
Loading package integer-gmp ... linking ... done.
Loading package base ... linking ... done.
λ: ?

<interactive>:2:1: parse error on input `?'
λ:
Leaving GHCi.

FYI, just adding a "Type ? for help." after "Invalid selection." would improve
the situation massively.

werner claimed this task.