CBOR2COMMENT(1)

okay so bestie, pull up a chair 🫶 this is cbor2comment(1), the manual page for the lil tool that takes CBOR wire protocol and gives you back a commented version of it. it's giving ✨annotated hex✨ and we're gonna go through every single line together, no cap.

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🎀 NAME 🎀

cbor2comment — convert CBOR wire protocol to commented version 💖

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

  cbor2comment test.cbor > test.txt

that's it. that's the whole vibe. feed it a file, redirect the glow-up into a text file. periodt. 💅

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so like, cbor2comment creates a commented version of an input bytestream. not a decoder, not a pretty-printer that hides stuff — a commentary track for your bytes. 🎬

for example, if the input contained the two bytes (in hex) 61 61, the output would be:

     61                -- String, length: 1
       61              -- "a"
   0x6161

see how it eats?? 😭 every byte gets its own little annotation, and then the summary hex line sits right there at the bottom like the credits. 61 says "String, length: 1", the nested 61 says "a", and 0x6161 is the whole thing in one glance. iconic. 👑

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• - — read from stdin instead of a file. this is the default, so if you just pipe stuff in, you're already doing it right. 🫶
• -t NUM, --tabsize NUM — the number of 2-space tab indents to move the -- to the right. so like, it's how far over your comments hang. lowkey a vibe knob. eventually, this will be replaced with an algorithm that takes two passes over the input. 👀
• -x [string] — read the input from the hex-encoded string on the command line. no file needed, just yeet the hex straight at it. 🔥
• -V, --version — print the node-cbor version and exit. short and sweet. 💜
• -h, --help — print some help text and exit. your friendly lil escape hatch. 🌈

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💀 TODO 💀

aka the "not me writing a list of my own homework" section, and honestly? relatable.

• cbor2comment is not built for execution speed or reuse. 🙈 it does the thing! it's just not racing anybody.
• Make 2 passes over the input. (this is the same two-pass dream the -t flag is waiting on, iykyk. 🧚)
• Move the summary hex output to the beginning. right now it's at the end, and it's gonna get relocated to the front. glow-up pending. ⭐

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🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

• node-cbor https://github.com/hildjj/node-cbor — the whole reason any of this exists, go give it a follow bestie.
• RFC 8949 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8949.html — the actual spec, the source material, the canon text. read it when you're feeling academic. 📚

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and that's the whole page!! 💖 this one's from November 2022, living in section 1 as CBOR2COMMENT(1), and brought to you by the node-cbor crew (yes, the same version that -V will happily print for you 🫶). go comment some bytes, you're gonna slay. 💅✨