[asterisk-dev] show vs. list

[Luigi Rizzo]

On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 06:36:32PM -1000, sam at bingner.com wrote:
> 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'  

i find the difference confusing too, maybe it's because i was too used
to the old interface...

I am also not particularly happy about the addition of prefixes
("console", "core") to several comands, that make it harder to type
them. Here I probably understand the motivations a bit more - reduce
the chance of namespace collisions.

In truth, i have to say that i did not follow the discussion (if
any) that led to these changes so there might have been good reasons
for them. Still, i think your final comment is very appropriate:

	the goal of the CLI is to be as simple and intuitive as possible 

cheers
luigi

on the other hand i have not followed the list closely when the change
was made, maybe there was some good argument
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com --
> 
> asterisk-dev mailing list
> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>    http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev