whattheflag 0.1.1

Lightweight CLI tool for instantly explaining command-line flags without digging through man pages

Lightweight CLI tool for instantly explaining command-line flags without digging through man pages

whattheflag helps you understand command-line flags and options for many popular CLI tools directly in your terminal.

Simply prepend whattheflag to a command to see what its flags mean.

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Features

• Explain command-line flags for many popular CLI tools
• Understand copied shell commands by translating their flags
• Expand combined short flags (e.g. -fsSL)
• Show both short and long flag versions when available
• Display explanations in a clean table format
• Show all known flags for a specific tool

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Installation

pip install whattheflag

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Usage

All functionality is available through the command line interface.

You can:

• Search for a specific tool (whattheflag df)
• Search for a specific flag or option (whattheflag curl -fsSL --help)
• Display an overview of all available options (whattheflag tools)

Example Commands

Overview for a Tool

Shows all available flags and options for a tool.

whattheflag df

Flag	Long	Description
-a	--all	Include dummy filesystems
-B	--block_size	Specify block size
-h	--human_readable	Print sizes in human readable format
-i	--inodes	List inode information
	--total	Produce grand total
-T	--type	Print filesystem type

Explanation for a Specific Flag

Shows the meaning of the provided flags.

whattheflag curl -fsSL --help

Flag	Long	Description
-f	--fail	Fail silently on HTTP errors
-s	--silent	Silent mode, do not show progress
-S	--show-error	Show error even when using silent mode
-L	--location	Follow HTTP redirects
-h	--help	Show help for curl

List Supported Tools

Lists all supported tools.

whattheflag tools

Supported Tools

awk	curl	df	docker
du	find	git	grep
gzip	jq	kubectl	nc
ps	rsync	sed	ssh
tar	top	unzip	wget
xargs	yq	zip