Cannot access help command when alias set

[archetyped]

Miller's help command is no longer accessible when an alias is set for mlr to automatically load a library of functions (as referenced in the docs):

alias mlr='mlr --load ~/my-functions.mlr'

After that, it looks like Miller is interpreting help as a verb:

$ mlr help topics
mlr: verb "help" not found. Please use "mlr --help" for a list.

Any workarounds to keep the auto-loading alias, but also maintain access to Miller's help command? Already tried setting a separate alias for mlr help (e.g. mlr-help), but the mlr portion in that alias still appears to be expanded to the auto-loading alias, resulting the in the same error message as above. 😿

[johnkerl]

Yikes! :|

OK, there should be a way to have help be found when it's not first on the command line. Maybe when it's the first verb-looking thing on the command line, after the command-line-parse step, but before the set-up-data-stream step. I can do that as a software mod.

Nearer-term, as a workaround, shells will generally accept a leading backslash -- e.g. if alias rm='rm -i', then \rm is just the bare command without the -i aliases in. Or /bin/rm. So you can \mlr help or /usr/local/bin/mlr help (or wherever mlr is installed on your system), for the moment.

[archetyped]

Awesome, thanks for the tip 👍 \mlr help works!

[archetyped]

On a somewhat related note, where do flags such as --always-color go when using mlr help (e.g. when piping output to less)? For example, I see the --help-color flag in the docs, which seems like it should be used with mlr help, but I get no joy when trying to use flags in different positions:

$ mlr --always-color help topics
mlr: verb "help" not found. Please use "mlr --help" for a list.

$ mlr help topics --always-color
mlr help topics takes no additional argument.

$ mlr help --always-color topics
--always-color
Instructs Miller to colorize output even when it normally would not. Useful for piping output to `less -r`.
No help found for "topics". Please try 'mlr help find topics' for approximate match.
See also 'mlr help topics'.

Perhaps I'm missing something basic?

[johnkerl]

@archetyped try mlr help flags or mlr help find --always-color

There should be an option for mlr help flags --always-color -- current mlr help flags doesn't let you put anything after

[archetyped]

@johnkerl apologies if I wasn't clear. I'm not asking how to access documentation for flags, rather I want to be able to use flags such as --always-color with the help command.

As noted in Miller's documentation for the --always-color flag, flags are useful for piping output to less, but I cannot find a way to set flags when outputting documentation via mlr help. For example, the following results in an error message from Miller being piped into less:

mlr --always-color help flags | less -r

Likewise, according to the docs --help-color flag appears to be meant specifically for use with the help command, but it's not clear how/where to set that flag when using the help command.

$ mlr --help-color seagreen1 help flags
# Output: mlr: verb "help" not found. Please use "mlr --help" for a list.

[johnkerl]

Ahhh yes. :)

That needs fixing.

[johnkerl]

@archetyped as of #1292:

• mlr --always-color help flags | less -r produces colorized output
• mlr --help-color seagreen1 help flags works
• No need for \mlr help if mlr is aliased to mlr --load ~/my-functions.mlr
• mlr help flag --always-color exists

[archetyped]

Awesome, thanks! Looking forward to it.