Re: :help :check inconsistent with :check

On Sun, Jun 2, 2019 at 2:27 AM John Little <john.b.little@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I just struck an inconsistency that had me confused.
>
> I was watching a steadily growing log file, and with autoread set, I used the command
>
> :check
>
> and nothing happened (but for a message I didn't understand). So I went to the help and ran
>
> :help :check
>
> and got the help for the command I thought I was running. Eventually I worked out that :check is actually :checkpath, and I should have used :checktime.
>
> But surely ":h :xyz" should give the help for ":xyz", but am I missing something?

The online help has a tag for the full command (:checktime or
:checkpath) and for the _shortest_ abbreviation. Now the shortest
abbreviation for :checkpath is :che, not :check; so :help :check will
get you the first tag found which begins with :check, not necessarily
the ex-command for which :check is accepted as an abbreviation (for
this, line 827 of doc/tagsrch.txt would have had to be:
*che* *chec* *check* *checkp* *checkpa* *checkpat* *checkpath*
instead of just the first and last ones of these; similarly for _all_
other ex-commands, which I believe would have made the doc/tags file
much bigger.

:help :check<Tab> (with 'wildmenu' on) or :help :check<Ctrl-D> would
have shown you all helptags beginning with :check, namely :checkt,
:checkpath and :checktime. It would also _not_ have shown you :check
because there is no help tag so named.

Best regards,
Tony.

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