Re: Readline Documentation

[John Devin]

On Fri, Sep 13, 2024 at 3:24 PM Chet Ramey <chet.ramey@case.edu> wrote:
>
> > I considered that maybe it
> > would only do this in response to being set directly, but neither
> > ~/.bashrc nor /etc/bash.bashrc on my system include it, nor any other
> > file I can find. Unless this has been changed between that version and
> > now, it means bash is currently reporting a variable with no way to
> > discover what it means or what its effects are without changing it and
> > testing.
>
> It has no effects in its default state. If you don't change it, nothing
> happens. If you change it, you change `bell-style' instead.
>

Those three sentences are more-or-less what I would be asking be added
to the documentation (along with "Don't use this, use bell-style
instead").

> > The fact that its usage continues suggests documenting it as
> > deprecated would be beneficial.
>
> Maybe. Or maybe it's just time to remove it once and for all.
>

I didn't think that would be considered as an option, so if it is then
I guess it might render my point moot. Does 'remove it' here mean that
it will no longer have any effect? And if so, would it be reported as
'unknown variable name' if set in an .inputrc? Or maybe it won't
report 'unknown variable name', but it also won't have any effect?
Either way, I suppose `bind -v` won't list it anymore? Out of
curiosity, would 'meta-flag' be remaining?

> > Many of the stackoverflow/reddit/etc
> > discussions I found while looking into this included people using both
> > 'bell-style' and 'prefer-visual-bell' simply because they didn't know
> > what one meant, and then keeping both in their config once they found
> > the combination that did what they wanted. Essentially, I think it's
> > being cargo-culted. The fact that `bind -v` still reports it certainly
> > doesn't help.
>
> Did these discussions note that it's not documented?
>

I think I can answer 'yes' to that, even if I can't quote any one post
as saying "This isn't documented in the manpage." These two users
(https://superuser.com/a/1620055) seem to have had some trouble, to
the point that they had the right answer first and "un-corrected" it
(see the edit history) to the wrong one: "I could have swore it used
to be different, but so goes my memory!" - user at that link. Again
though, kind of moot, if it's being removed so not much to discuss
there.

- John Devin