Re: Readline Documentation

[Chet Ramey]

On 9/13/24 11:00 AM, John Devin wrote:

> > As you said, it's been deprecated -- and undocumented -- for over 30 years
> > (and remains only for backwards compatibility). There's no reason to
> > document it.
>
> I understand it's been superseded, but I do want to point this out:
> running `bind -v` in bash 5.2.21 right now still lists 'set
> prefer-visible-bell on' in its output.

Sure, the variable corresponding to the option has a default value -- all
variables do. That variable is literally never used.

> 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.


> 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.

> 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?

--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/

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