On 2021-01-29, at 11:32:46, John P. Hartmann wrote: > > In general, pipes are forgiving and accepts a wider gamut of options than the > documentation specifies. > > The documentation is written to be comprehensible and flowing (in authors' > argot), if it were to show all possible combinations of options and what not, > it would, certainly in the case of lookup, be incomprehensible. > I disagree on philosophy. If a utility accepts undocumented constructs, both the user and the designer are guessing on the meaning, and those guesses may disagree.
I consider it more important that constructs be lucid to the novice than terse for the expert. VM, CP and probably Pipelines are egregious offenders. The syntax and semantics of CP commands vary depending on VM class. Keywords may be omitted or operands rearranged provided that the result is unambiguous. But a novice, following a tersely keyword-free example may unwittingly supply an operand that mimics a keyword with astonishing and perhaps harmful effect. And designers struggle to add new function without invalidating existing art. -- gil
