yaml unmarshal error :: Cannot unmarshal !!str tags [ ... into sheet.frontmatter about cheat HOT 1 CLOSED

@Almenon, thanks for the bug report, and sorry for my delay getting back to you.

I can reproduce this behavior, but I consider this to be a feature and not a bug, and I don't plan to change the current behavior. I'll explain my reasoning.

As you've discovered, this error occurs when cheat attempts to load a cheatsheet that contains malformed front-matter. There are essentially only four behaviors that we could implement here:

1. Fail with an explicit error message. (This is the current behavior.)
2. Entirely ignore the cheatsheet with the malformed front-matter
3. Discard the malformed front-matter, but otherwise attempt to use the cheatsheet.
4. Discord the malformed front-matter, write a warning to stderr, and attempt to use the cheatsheet.

Of the four, I think option one - the current behavior - is preferable.

If we pursue option two, we'll inevitably "hide" cheatsheets from users as they become malformed through editing. Worse, we'll also hide the fact that we're hiding them! The user will simply be unaware that their cheatsheets contain errors, and that they're being silently ignored.

If we pursue option three, cheatsheet content will still be searchable (via -s), but tagging will be silently broken. And, once again, the user will be unaware that there's a problem.

Option four perhaps improves upon option three, but there's still a risk that the user simply does not see the error written to stderr. This risk increases with the length of a cheatsheet, and some cheatsheets can be quite long.

With all of that said, I think the "hard" failure is probably best for the user in the long-term, if inconvenient in the short-term (in that a user will be required to fix their cheatsheets immediately, prior to resuming their use of cheat).

I'm going to close this ticket, but I'm open to feedback if you have a differing opinion, and/or other suggestions for behaviors that I have not considered above.

Thanks.

from cheat.