How to install howdoi
- Download and install ActivePython
- Open Command Prompt
- Type
pypm install howdoi
Lastest release
howdoi - instant coding answers via the command line


Are you a hack programmer? Do you find yourself constantly Googling for how to do basic programing tasks?
Suppose you want to know how to format a date in bash. Why open your browser and read through blogs when you can just...
$ 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
Installation
pip install howdoi
or
brew install https://raw.github.com/gleitz/howdoi/master/howdoi.rb
or
python setup.py install
Usage
usage: howdoi.py [-h] [-p POS] [-a] [-l] [-c] [-n NUM_ANSWERS] QUERY [QUERY ...] instant coding answers via the command line positional arguments: QUERY the question to answer optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit -p POS, --pos POS select answer in specified position (default: 1) -a, --all display the full text of the answer -l, --link display only the answer link -c, --color enable colorized output -n NUM_ANSWERS, --num-answers NUM_ANSWERS number of answers to return -C, --clear-cache clear the cache
Author
- Benjamin Gleitzman (@gleitz)
Notes
- Works with Python2 and Python3
- A standalone Windows executable with the howdoi application is available here.
- An Alfred Workflow for howdoi can be found at http://blog.gleitzman.com/post/48539944559/howdoi-alfred-even-more-instant-answers.
- Howdoi uses a cache for faster access to previous questions. Caching functionality can be disabled by setting the HOWDOI_DISABLE_CACHE environment variable. The cache is stored in ~/.howdoi/cache.
- Special thanks to Rich Jones (@miserlou) for the idea.
Troubleshooting
You might get the following error when installing with Homebrew:
==> python setup.py install http://peak.telecommunity.com/EasyInstall.html Please make the appropriate changes for your system and try again.
Fix the error by executing the following command:
sudo chmod -R go+w /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/
News
1.1.4
- Added caching
1.1.3
- Added fix to handle change in Google search page HTML
- Updated Travis CI tests
1.1.2
- Compatibility fixes for Python3.2
- Travis CI tests now being run for Python 2.6, 2.7, 3.2, and 3.3
1.1.1
- Added message when question has no answer
1.1
- Added multiple answers with -n/--num-answers flag
- Added colorized output with -c/--color flag
- Added answer link to the bottom of questions with -a/--all flag
- Unit tests now managed through Travis CI
1.0
- Added support for Python3
- Switched to the requests library instead of urllib2
- Project status changed to Production/Stable
- Added troubleshooting steps to the README
0.2
- Added sane flags
- Now using /usr/bin/env python instead of /usr/bin/python
- Updated README for brew installation instructions
0.1.2
- Added Windows executable
- Updated README for pip installation instructions
0.1.1
- Added to PyPI
0.1
- We're doing it live!