Or is there maybe a way to set the pager for all help related queries to some command? I’m using bat and would like to pipe all --help through | bat --language=help by default for the syntax highlighting and colored output… Or if you know a lower effort way to color the output of --help let me know.
To answer the original question, even though @RedWeasel@lemmy.world’s advice really is superior:
All commands that can be executed via your shell must live in your
$PATHor their subdirectories. You could enumerate all files in there, filter by being executable, and run them with the--helpargument.You can then filter these commands by their exit code. If
--helpis a recognized flag, the exit code should be0. Otherwise it should be something else. (Running every command blindly might be a bad idea though.)Or if you are lazy you could add “-h” as an option to said help command for when --help doesn’t work. Shouldn’t take to long to to make a list with a script that runs each command to with --help and logs it all to a file though. Then just go look for the ones that don’t like it in the log. Apparently bash has a builtin command named help, so a different name is probably better then.
ls -1 $dir | while read line do echo “----------” $line --help |& >> logfile.txt done
Just search in you favorite pager for “-----” and just hit “next” key.
I think your best bet to to create a script called help and run “help <command>” and the script would do the rest.
I think this is the correct answer in all honesty. Create a new script like help (or man2 or whatever) that pipes the argument through bat for you.
There has to be a hook somewhere for every command that executes. I’m not sure, but something in the chain after using
set -xthen running any terminal command likely is on the right path to doing this. (If you tryset -x, you can turn it off withset +x).set -ooptions are another I’m not very familiar with but might be related.set -xconfigures the running process, your shell. This is a posix standard flag. See https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap02.htmlthere has to be a hook somewhere for every command that executes
Why do think this? I’m not aware of any shells that have such a feature. I’m not saying it couldn’t be done, but it would be a new feature.
I like the other suggestion of having a wrapper script that does what you need.
You’d be intercepting all commands just to verify if they have a help flag and then if not executing them as they were intended. If the intercept got broke, then the shell would be completely broken.
The --help output must be getting passed through groff at some point to create the layout with tabbing. Wherever that is happening must have a point of entry. Perhaps it only requires modifying groff with a filter function or something like that?
Not everything uses groff. A lot will have their own function or another.
Edit: I think for what you indicting you are wanting to try you’d need to either patch your shell of choice or write your own.
Edit2: If you did patch it, the best way I can think of to get something upstreamed would be to patch bash to use CTRL-Enter to automatically pipe the output to the default pager defined in BASHPAGER followed by PAGER if it doesn’t exist. Then set the BASHPAGER to your “bat” command.
Frankly, I would be surprised, if anything uses groff for displaying
--help, unless it shows the man page for that.
The most basic implementation of--helpis a manually formatted multi-line string written into the source code, which gets printed as-is.
For dynamic layouting, you do need more logic, but rendering it to groff source code first does not make that easier. For tabbing, you print an appropriate number of\t.At this point, someone has to have already made a prettier shell or terminal that is configured like this by default. Hideous 1950s monocolor --help output can’t be a novel issue in 2025.
Grep?
