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Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2021 12:07:22 +0000
From: Eric Wong <e@80x24.org>
To: Kyle Meyer <kyle@kyleam.com>
Cc: meta@public-inbox.org
Subject: Re: does "lei q" --format/-f need to exist?
Message-ID: <20210218120722.GA14112@dcvr>
References: <20210217044032.GA17934@dcvr>
 <87r1le2bdo.fsf@kyleam.com>
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Kyle Meyer <kyle@kyleam.com> wrote:
> Eric Wong writes:
> 
> > "maildir:/path/to/dir" has been supported by public-inbox-watch
> > for years, now.
> >
> > The following all work today:
> >
> > 	lei q -o mboxrd:/tmp/foo.mboxrd ...
> > 	lei q -o mboxcl2:/tmp/foo.mboxcl2 ...
> > 	lei q -o maildir:/tmp/foo/ ...
> >
> > So -f/--format seems redundant.
> 
> I find "<format>:<destination>" pretty natural/intuitive, even if
> perhaps the stdout case (e.g., "mboxrd:-" or "concatjson:-") looks a bit
> odd.  Dropping --format makes sense to me.

How about we just drop --format from the documentation, for now?
(or at least stop recommending it when using with -o)

The stdout case might be a reason to keep it for "lei q",
especially since stdout is the default output:

# this defaults to stdout, looks reasonable:
lei q -f concatjson SEARCH_TERMS...

# this does the same thing, but is more difficult to type and
# looks strange:
lei q -o concatjson:- SEARCH_TERMS

# more readable, but more typing:
lei q -o concatjson:/dev/stdout SEARCH_TERMS