What's your input on /input?

Question

The tag input has at least two unrelated meanings:

Input devices (keyboard, mouse, etc.), in particular device-independent event mechanisms, e.g. 1 2
Input to a program, e.g. 1 2

That second category is a bit fuzzy. It overlaps with stdin.

We also have tag:output, which is mostly the pendant of the second category, and its companion stdout (plus stderr but that's a more useful tag).

I propose to rename the input device meaning to input-device. I'm not sure what to do about the program input meaning and about output.

I agree too. I'm be inclined to drop the /output tag as well unless there's a compelling reason to keep it. — slm, May 26, 2015 at 11:36
@slm, what about braille tty, video, seat shakers and whatnot? — hildred, Jun 2, 2015 at 22:26
@hildred - can you elaborate? I don't understand what those have to do with /output. — slm, Jun 2, 2015 at 22:29
they are output devices that may not be directly associated with stdout, much as a mouse is a input device not associated with stdin. just food for thought. — hildred, Jun 2, 2015 at 22:32

Jenny D · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-26 07:54:18Z

7

As regards /input, I second moving it to /input-device.

As for /output, how about simply making it a synonym of /stdout? That seems to be the most frequent usage.

answered May 26, 2015 at 7:54

Jenny D

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