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I am writing a new CLI and I am considering using yang as a data definition language. It has almost everything I need: mandatory/optionals, types, derived types, acceptable ranges, descriptions and a ton of existing modules.

However, I want to provide short help prompts: type '?' and see possible values for the next field with a short help (say 60 chars max). And there are no short prompts in .yang structure as far as I know.

How one would add short prompt information to a .yang file? Have a companion file containing only short prompts? Extend .yang format? Embed this information in .yang comments?

I am sure I am not the first person doing it, what is the recommended practice? I suspect the answer is 'companion file' because it will work with existing .yang files.

uuu777
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2 Answers2

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The description statement is used to provide information for the module reader. If you want to provide a more user friendly text you can define your own statement. YANG supports a extension statement for this purpose.

Define it:

module my-extensions {
       ...

   extension help {
       description "Takes as argument a help-text string.";
       argument "text";
   }
}

Use it:

module example {
   import my-extensions {
       prefix "myext";
   }
       
   container example {
       myext:help "This is an example container";
   }
}
quality-gate
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I ended up using description field as the help string source.

uuu777
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