[o8r3oFTZPE]

"An extremely simple CLI that composes well with UNIX pipes"

Just for fun, I occasionally experiment with proposed "post-quantum" encryption solutions and one in particular called Classic McEliece, from the same author (more or less) as the encryption used in age. Its small and compiles quickly. The interface is elegant and seems impossible to screw up. I have rarely seen anyone outside of the author and his followers use file descriptors in compiled programs in this way. I like it.

Three programs, each only does one thing

     usage: cmkeypair 5>publickey 9>secretkey

     usage: cmencrypt <message 4<publickey >ciphertext

     usage: cmdecrypt <ciphertext 8<secretkey >message

To be fair, I should probably add that McEliece arguably fails the "small, copy-pasteable keys" criteria. :)

[paledot]

In theory I like the idea of making better use of file descriptors other than stdin and stderr. It seems like a powerful feature of *nix that never really caught on, except with that one sysadmin at work who writes insane one-liners with fifteen pipes.

In practice, I find the syntax needlessly obtuse, and numbered file descriptors are rare enough in the real world that most casual observers will have no idea what's going on.

[unkulunkulu]

I’m seeing this for the first time and don’t quite get the usefulness of this interface, can you help me? I mean, file descriptor numbers instead of ordinary options provide some i/o semantics, but I have to remember the descriptor numbers? Is there some mnemonic/logic behind the ids?

[o8r3oFTZPE]

Fair question. Im not the author so can only make a guess (other readers of HN surely know far more than I about these subjects). However I suspect the rationale is related to whats been called "Bernstein chaining".

https://cr.yp.to/proto/ucspi.txt

http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch06s06.html

https://skarnet.org/software/execline/grammar.html

https://www.oilshell.org/blog/2017/01/13.html

[unkulunkulu]

Hmmm, now I don’t get how Bernstein chaining relates to file descriptor interface. I’m curious about specifically the `4<infile` you seem to be admiring, you just observed its unusualness or do you see how its more powerful than the more common `-input infile`?

[air7]

Nice. TIL...