On 2016-12-29 11:38 -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: > Bernd Zeimetz <bernd@bzed.de> writes: > > On 12/29/2016 07:04 PM, Lars Wirzenius wrote: > > Also, this is not at all easy to parse: > > # ip -o address > 1: lo inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo\ valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever > 1: lo inet6 ::1/128 scope host \ valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever > 3: wlan0 inet 192.168.0.195/24 brd 192.168.0.255 scope global dynamic wlan0\ valid_lft 598191sec preferred_lft 598191sec > 3: wlan0 inet6 fe80::a288:69ff:fe31:2b62/64 scope link \ valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever > > The fields aren't labeled, > And the output (without -o) is less human-readable than the current > ifconfig output, Yeah I think that mess is why I've never felt any need to move away from ifconfig. I ran ip something a few times, went 'huh?' at the cryptic output and stayed with the rather more civilised /sbin/ifconfig. So it seem that the output does actually label things, but the things and labels look exactly the same. Would some colons really have hurt too much? i.e. mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000 is really mtu: 1500 qdisc: mq state: UP mode: DEFAULT group: default qlen: 1000 Anyone think the latter is a tad clearer? I still don't know what a qdisc is or a default group, but it's a lot easier to find things I do recognise. Before this discussion I just saw it as a mysterious jumble of 10 things (after a set of things in CAPITALS that were somewhat mysterious too (what's a LOWER_UP, I wonder) - who knows what it might mean. The choice to use the former rather than the latter is presumably why people who saw ifconfig's rather more civilised output first have not shifted in 15 years. Some people are forcefully pointing out in this thread that ifconfig is _wrong_, but I can't say I've ever noticed enough to care. It's fine for normal, simple, network config where the fanciest thing one ever does is create a bridge or mess with the masquerading/nat tables. Anyway, this discussion has produced some helpful links (cheers) which I, and no doubt others, will peruse. (I do at least not have to prefix ip with /sbin/, which is nice, so it's not all worse). But I reckon this is a little lesson in UI design and adoption, which it's worth remembering. Wookey -- Principal hats: Linaro, Debian, Wookware, ARM http://wookware.org/
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