Command for discovering commands

[waldekmastykarz]

I've been just working with the CLI and had a need to use the command to download the Teams package from SharePoint. I knew we have a command for that, but I couldn't recall off the top of my head what its name was. Of course you can search for a command in our docs, but since I was in the terminal it got me thinking: shouldn't we have a command that allows you to search for commands? Something like m365 find -q|--query <query> and it would search in names, descriptions, examples and show relevant results directly in the command line. Curious to hear what you all think.

[arjunumenon]

Liked the idea 🔥. It has almost become my muscle memory to swap the window to browser to check the command from docs. So did not realize its importance.

Though Idea is amazing, how are we going to get the consolidated information, or to what would we run our search command against? Would we be checking the docs?
I know how will come later, but just curious on how will we tackle it.

Now since the idea is ignited, I was wondering whether we can extend the feature to next level. What I have in mind is, once you execute the command, it will open the docs page (In the browser) as well when the command is executed so that if users need rich docs experience, they can get that too.

[arjunumenon]

What would be the scenario for this?

I am again thinking in the lines of say CLI Config settings. I do a search on the terminal which gives me the list of results with the verbiages from the docs. In the terminal, look and feel for the tables will have its own limitation and what I was thinking is to have more rich experience in the browse which will give me the details. Something in the lines of typical web search result.

But again when I am thinking out loud, it may not make much sense which I initially thought it would be. Even though we give an experience to open a web page, it may complicate the intuitiveness of the whole feature. So I think I can hold my ambition in this case 😉.

Another question If I may - In your thought process when we get the search result, are we giving the option for the users to, say select the specific result from may result sets. On selection, it will give the details on the same shell. Is that your vision is?

[waldekmastykarz]

Another question If I may - In your thought process when we get the search result, are we giving the option for the users to, say select the specific result from may result sets. On selection, it will give the details on the same shell. Is that your vision is?

Not sure I fully understand the question, but the idea is that if I'm in terminal and I know that we've got a command to do something, but I just don't know its actual name (so I can't navigate through command groups to discover it because I don't know in which group it is), I can find it directly in the terminal without having to switch to the browser, search there, and get back to the terminal.

[arjunumenon]

Not sure I fully understand the question, but the idea is that if I'm in terminal and I know that we've got a command to do something,

Again mental note to self. Need to work desperately on asynchronous communication.

I get your first part of point or rather the approach.

1. You search something on the terminal, something like "Command to add delete list item"
2. You get the list of results with title and description based on your search
3. On the behavior of the result is my question :
4. QN : Will we just see the list of details of the commands (Title, Description etc.)
5. QN : Or will the user has an interactive ability to select the results from the list?
6. IF YES to above question (4) - Do you visualize to open the details on the same shell? Or do you visualize to open the details in the browser windows? I know your preference if you had thought of this approach would be to open in the same shell

[waldekmastykarz]

4.5.6.: My gut feeling says, that if you don't know the command's name, the next step will likely be to get its help, to see the options, examples, etc. So perhaps search results should be interactive where you can select a result and then the next step is for us to show the full help, so that you can see if it's what you need or not, and if so, how to use it.

[arjunumenon]

4.5.6.: My gut feeling says, that if you don't know the command's name, the next step will likely be to get its help, to see the options, examples, etc. So perhaps search results should be interactive where you can select a result and then the next step is for us to show the full help, so that you can see if it's what you need or not, and if so, how to use it.

Gotcha. Kinda assumed that would be your vision also. Totally with you on that. All good for 🚀.

My initial thought here was in the same line of what is mentioned in #4037 . So I think we may not need that feature to be needed here if we bring in a new option for opening docs in browser if needed. So all good for now.

[Adam-it]

really like the idea 👍. As usually I work only on a single screen I also don't like context switching between terminal and browser.
I think the search command by default should search for the giver keyword in command titles and description, and in examples when an additional option will be defined as this could give a lot of confusion.
also I would add some --top option, for example to return top 3 results --top 3 🤔.

[waldekmastykarz]

I think the search command by default should search for the giver keyword in command titles and description, and in examples when an additional option will be defined as this could give a lot of confusion.

Now you get me going! What if matches in different properties ranked differently? Ie. match in title ranks for 1, description for 0.5 and body/examples for 0.25?

I think we need to keep in mind that this should be as simple as possible, allowing people to find what they need. If finding what you need requires you to use options and understand how our search works, we failed. We should aim for how internet search works: you've got one text box, you type what you're after and hopefully you find what you need. 😎