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Comment by rollcat | Hacker News Reader

Apologies for nitpicking, but Lynx is not a CLI program. CLI programs are non-interactive, composable via stdio / shell scripting, designed to do their one task and return you to your shell prompt. Lynx is an interactive, terminal-based (character cell grid) program, that takes over your shell session - it has every quality of a GUI program, except it's using a terminal emulator as its toolkit.

But of course - it's still awesome, it's just not CLI.

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Often people distinguish between "command-line interfaces" (CLI) and "text user interfaces" (TUI). So "sed" is a CLI program, while vim is a TUI program.

But it's also common to use "CLI" to include "TUI" programs, so I don't think your parent is wrong.

> But it's also common to use "CLI" to include "TUI" programs [...].

It is indeed common, and (IMO) it is harmful, as TUI programs are just GUI programs in disguise. They do have two unique strengths: readily accessible over a serial console or an SSH session; and being the lowest common denominator of GUI programming. But they don't share any of the typical (desirable) qualities of CLI programs; typically, any CLI features (if present at all) are an afterthought.

    $ ls | vim
    Vim: Warning: Input is not from a terminal

Denotatively, you're 100% correct.

Connotatively, I have no concerns and won't revisit the comment, but will keep the distinction in mind when addressing a technical audience.

The other way around,

    vim | ls

Is a 100% foolproof and very “loud” sign that today is a scatterbrained day and I should write off the idea of being productive. Or I should have another cup of coffee.

Thank you for drawing this distinction. I had not mentally realized the difference before, this makes me interested in trying TUI programs. Will go check lynx out today.

It's a "TUI."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text-based_user_interface

I greatly appreciate the correction and feedback.

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