whatis

Whatis gives you the ability to quickly search Wikipedia and Urban Dictionary quickly from the command line.

Sample Usage

Command:

whatis baseball

Output:

Baseball is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of nine players who take turns batting and fielding.

Installation

Via the Install Script

If you're on linux/os x and want a quick install simply run the the install script

For python2: curl https://raw2.github.com/adrianc-a/whatis/master/install.sh | bash

For python3: curl https://raw2.github.com/adrianc-a/whatis/master/python3/install.sh | bash

Manually

If you want to do this manually the installation is still pretty simple

1. Download the whatis.py however you want (and for whatever version of python you want)

2. Change the name to whatis and run chmod +x whatis to make it executable

3. You should move whatis to a bin folder somewhere or add it to your path

Advanced Usage

By default, whatis will search wikipedia and if it finds no results, it will search urban dictionary. If you would like to bypass this and search urban dictionary, simply pass it the -u option

Example:

whatis -u idk

Output:

Definition:
Shorthand form for "I Don't Know".
Example:
Person1: what do you want to do today?
Person2: idk you pick

By default, whatis gets the first result, to get the second or third, simply pass a -n argument

Example:

whatis -u -n 2 idk

Output:

Definition:
[I]
[D]on't
[K]now
Example:
That's a way easier way to learn what IDK means...