[asterisk-dev] show vs. list

[sam at bingner.com]

I recently was looking at the changes made in 1.4 to add 'list' in  
certain instances over 'show' in the CLI.   I would suggest  
standardizing on 'show' for anything that's displaying information, be  
it a list or not.  The addition of the option to have 'list'  
obfuscates the interface in that it may not be as simple to intuit the  
command necessary to perform a specific action.   For instance, would  
we want "iax2 show stats" or "iax2 list stats"?  It's technically a  
list of statistics being displayed, but I expect most people would  
expect it to appear in 'show'.   And 'database show' or 'database  
list'?  Are you showing the contents of a database, or listing the  
contents of a database?  Does it really matter?

While 'list' may be correct when displaying a list, 'show' is not  
necessarily incorrect when showing the contents of a list and would  
eliminate one possible point of confusion.  In short, is the goal of  
the CLI to be as simple and intuitive as possible or to use the most  
proper english possible on every command?


Sam