Dear Adarsh Babu Kalepalli,

In message CAJgxa7dAF5+gu1F2JMKrYs2YEKg-Xw6hzyOKDKNH2ktTyDoFCw@mail.gmail.com you wrote:

When we type "help shell_command" at u-boot console. The syntax for the command usage is displayed.

In most of the cases I noticed parameters enclosed in '[]' or/and '<>' or just the sub-command string is provided.

From the help of most of the commands, and on using them I observed that parameters enclosed in -'[]' could be optional -'<>' could be mandatory

In some cases, the mandatory parameters were not enclosed in "<>" . For ex. env ask name [message] [size] - ask for environment variable env edit name - edit environment variable env exists name - tests for existence of variable

in the above case "name" seems to be a mandatory parameter.

Could you please let me know the notation we follow to indicate the mandatory and optional input parameters for shell commands in their syntax (displayed through help) ??

In general we try to follow the SYNOPSIS style of UNIX™ man pages, see [1]:

For commands, this shows the syntax of the command and its arguments (including options); boldface is used for as-is text and italics are used to indicate replaceable arguments. Brackets ([]) surround optional arguments, vertical bars (|) separate choices, and ellipses (...) can be repeated.

Only we don't have bold or italic fonts, so bold is often omitted and in some cases we may write <italics>.

But note that these texts have been written buy a large number of developers, so don't expect strict consistency. But as usual: patches for cleanup are always welcome.

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk