Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/26982
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I am writing the built-in help for a command line program. The exact name is irrelevant, so let's use `foo` as a placeholder.

This utility can be called with some arguments (like `foo -v`) or without any arguments at all (just `foo`).

I'm struggling with describing the no-argument call in the built-in help. (There's a common practice that the `-h` or `--help` argument is used to print that help on the screen.) A common output of `-h` command looks like this:

    $ foo -h
    foo [OPTIONS...]
    
    Do FOO in the most awesome way possible
    
      -h --help Show this help
      -v --version Show package version

Note the pattern for explaining arguments:

      (short) (long) Explanation

The no-argument call doesn't fit in this pattern. All these variants look quite unnatural:

      foo Do the FOO
                          Do the FOO
      (no arguments) Do the FOO

In search for examples I've looked at several utilities that have valid no-argument calls (e.g. `sh`, `bash` and other shells, `systemctl`), but none of them describe that in the `-h` output.

The question: what is the proper way of documenting the no-arguments call in the built-in help?

- Should I write something in the place of `(no arguments)` above?
- Or should I explain that in a different place (where)?

Original score: 10