Add ? to terminal for access to help

[dpsanders]

Coming from IPython, it has become a reflex to use command?, with ? at the end, to gain access to the help for command, i.e. as an alias for help(command).

This would be great (i.e., necessary for attracting Python users) to implement in julia.

[Keno]

We use ? as the ternary operator, so this probably won't happen, sorry.

[dpsanders]

Oh, I see. Some other shortcut then? Typing help(...) is 5 characters too
many to type compared to ?

On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 11:35 AM, Keno Fischer notifications@github.comwrote:

We use ? as the ternary operator, so this probably won't happen, sorry.

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/3833#issuecomment-21574938
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Dr. David P. Sanders

Profesor Titular "A" / Associate Professor
Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)

dpsanders@gmail.com
http://sistemas.fciencias.unam.mx/~dsanders

Cubículo / office: #414, 4o. piso del Depto. de Física

Tel.: +52 55 5622 4965

[quinnj]

I think ? at the beginning of the line was proposed as a shortcut to help. i.e.

?abs
Base.abs(x)

   Absolute value of "x"

This is what R does and would be in conjunction with ; being a shortcut to shell commands already. I don't recall what happened with this proposal though.

[johnmyleswhite]

Following on @karbarcca's comment, placing ? at the start of a line (like R does) seems much saner than Python's convention.

If we're going to allow ? at the end of tokens (which requires removing the ternary operator used all over the code base), it should indicate predicates (as discussed several times before), not a call to help.

[Keno]

Yeah, I wouldn't mind that though I seem to recall there was some reason not to do it? @StefanKarpinski ?

[dpsanders]

? at the beginning of the command would be fine. In fact, this also works
in IPython, but for some reason everybody puts it at the end!
I guess that's in the docs. I'll try and get the IPython docs changed to
put the ?s at the start.

On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 11:45 AM, Keno Fischer notifications@github.comwrote:

Yeah, I wouldn't mind that though I seem to recall there was some reason
not to do it? @StefanKarpinski https://github.com/StefanKarpinski ?

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/3833#issuecomment-21575614
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Dr. David P. Sanders

Profesor Titular "A" / Associate Professor
Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)

dpsanders@gmail.com
http://sistemas.fciencias.unam.mx/~dsanders

Cubículo / office: #414, 4o. piso del Depto. de Física

Tel.: +52 55 5622 4965

[StefanKarpinski]

I'm pretty sure that ? at the beginning of a line is ok.

[Keno]

Well, in that case, let's do that

[quinnj]

Can we include an easter egg like R? :)

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[ViralBShah]

This would be great. I always put the ? at the end in ipython too. Good to know that you can put it in the front too.

[milktrader]

+1 for ?command