man page shows wrong syntax for irc:// URLs

[Daniel González Gasull]

Binary package hint: xchat

man xchat displays wrong information about how to open a irc:// URL. According to the man page it should be, e.g.:

xchat -e irc://irc.freenode.org:6667/xchat

but the correct syntax is

xchat -e --url=irc://irc.freenode.org:6667/xchat

[Daniel González Gasull (gasull)]

Just for the sake of testing the error, the right URL above is irc://irc.freenode.net:8001/xchat

So, again. The syntax according to the man page:

xchat -e irc://irc.freenode.net:8001/xchat

The right syntax:

xchat -e --url=irc://irc.freenode.net:8001/xchat

[Vallery Lancey (muscovy)]

Both commands work fine for me (10.04). By right, do you mean the -e one opens in an existing window?

[Daniel González Gasull (gasull)]

The result for me when running

xchat -e irc://irc.freenode.net:8001/xchat

is that it opens xchat in a new instance and it doesn't open the channel #xchat.

[Matt Fischer (mfisch)]

Ditto what Daniel said. In order to get it in the same window -e --url is the proper syntax. I will write up a patch.

[Matt Fischer (mfisch)]

I've been thinking about this more and although I can certainly fix the manpage, I'm wondering if this is a bug in the software? Why would -e not work as expected without --url=?

[Brian (lifeispain)]

-e can also be used in conjunction with -c/--command, so -e does not in and of itself imply the param should be a url, hence the need for --url

[Matt Fischer (mfisch)]

I adjusted the manpage with the attached patch. I'm not 100% sure that I did the patch correctly, but it did apply cleanly for me with a dry-run done afterwards.