Technical Writing Tip for CLI Commands

Saw this nifty documentation idea in the Cisco® Smart Business Architecture (SBA) guide today.

Commands to enter at a CLI appear as follows:

configure terminal

Long commands that line wrap are underlined. Enter them as one command:

wrr-queue random-detect max-threshold 1 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 

The idea of using underlining to indicated that a CLI command has line wrapped is really quite clever way of showing. Especially for Cisco IOS CLI, it’s quite difficult to know where the end of line or to quickly determine the proper syntax. This a line wrap for CLI can be quite damaging, especially for internal documentation.

You can find the guides at http://www.cisco.com/go/sba

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About Greg Ferro

Greg Ferro is a Network Engineer/Architect, mostly focussed on Data Centre, Security Infrastructure, and recently Virtualization. He has over 20 years in IT, in wide range of employers working as a freelance consultant including Finance, Service Providers and Online Companies. He is CCIE#6920 and has a few ideas about the world, but not enough to really count.

He is a host on the Packet Pushers Podcast, blogger at EtherealMind.com and on Twitter @etherealmind and Google Plus

  • girifox

    So simple, so smart.