howdoi

<p align="center">
    <a href="https://pypi.python.org/pypi/howdoi">
        <img src="https://www.dropbox.com/s/dk13iy2uoufdwr7/HowDoIcolor512.png?raw=1" alt="Sherlock, your neighborhood command-line sloth sleuth" />
    </a>
</p>
<h1 align="center">howdoi</h1>
<h2 align="center">Instant coding answers via the command line</h2>
<p align="center"><strong>⚡ Never open your browser to look for help again ⚡</strong></p>

<p align="center">
    <a href="https://github.com/gleitz/howdoi/actions?query=workflow%3A%22Python+CI%22"><img src="https://img.shields.io/github/actions/workflow/status/gleitz/howdoi/python.yml?style=plastic&color=78dce8" alt="build status"></a>
    <a href="https://pepy.tech/project/howdoi"><img src="https://img.shields.io/pypi/dm/howdoi?style=plastic&color=ab9df2&maxAge=86400&label=downloads&query=%24.total_downloads&url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.pepy.tech%2Fapi%2Fprojects%2Fhowdoi" alt="downloads"></a>
    <a href="https://pypi.python.org/pypi/howdoi"><img src="https://img.shields.io/pypi/pyversions/howdoi.svg?style=plastic&color=ff6188" alt="Python versions"></a>
</p>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

## Introduction to howdoi

Are you a hack programmer? Do you find yourself constantly Googling for
how to do basic programming tasks?

Suppose you want to know how to format a date in bash. Why open your
browser and read through blogs (risking major distraction) when you can
simply stay in the console and ask howdoi:

    $ howdoi format date bash
    > DATE=`date +%Y-%m-%d`

howdoi will answer all sorts of queries:

    $ howdoi print stack trace python
    > import traceback
    >
    > try:
    >     1/0
    > except:
    >     print '>>> traceback <<<'
    >     traceback.print_exc()
    >     print '>>> end of traceback <<<'
    > traceback.print_exc()

    $ howdoi convert mp4 to animated gif
    > video=/path/to/video.avi
    > outdir=/path/to/output.gif
    > mplayer "$video" \
    >         -ao null \
    >         -ss "00:01:00" \  # starting point
    >         -endpos 10 \ # duration in second
    >         -vo gif89a:fps=13:output=$outdir \
    >         -vf scale=240:180

    $ howdoi create tar archive
    > tar -cf backup.tar --exclude "www/subf3" www

[![image](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/tar.png)](https://xkcd.com/1168/)

## Installation

    pip install howdoi

or

    brew install howdoi

## Usage

### New to howdoi?

    howdoi howdoi

### RTFM

-   [Introduction and
    installation](http://gleitz.github.io/howdoi/introduction/)
-   [Usage](http://gleitz.github.io/howdoi/usage/)
-   [Contributing to
    howdoi](http://gleitz.github.io/howdoi/contributing_to_howdoi/)
-   [Advanced
    usage](http://gleitz.github.io/howdoi/howdoi_advanced_usage/)
-   [Troubleshooting](http://gleitz.github.io/howdoi/troubleshooting/)

### Commands

    usage: howdoi [-h] [-p POS] [-n NUM] [-a] [-l] [-c] [-x] [-C] [-j] [-v] [-e [ENGINE]]
    [--save] [--view] [--remove] [--empty] [QUERY ...]