Just echoing that this would be a dramatic increase in usability. The standard job could then be something like:

./graphpass -gq /path/to/file.graphml /path/to/output.gexf

It would also prevent needing to remember the trailing / in --output, which I always forget. 😄

Makes sense to me. Whatever approach works best works for me.

After looking into it a bit, doing stdin stdout is possible, but requires some re-working of the existing code because of the way the filtering works.
It's not a big problem, but it means I will need to do some splitting of the FILEPATH to get at a filename (necessary for handling various ways of filtering the graph).

This does not mean much to the quickpass feature, but I'd like it to not break if someone uses it a different way.

Interesting! Could you walk me through this a bit.. what would we potentially lose by going to stdin stdout?

I do not think we have to lose anything. It's just that I would have to do some additional work to keep things running the way they do now.

For example, if you do .graphpass -f {FILENAME} -m oidp -p 10

It would use FILENAME to create outputs for degree, indegree, outdegree and pagerank filtering with new filenames FILENAME10Degree.graphml, FILENAME10Indegree.graphml and so on.

If I just have a filepath (eg. /Users/username/bleh.graphml), I cannot do that. I have to retrieve "bleh.graphml." Similar for the outpath. This is not a major problem, but it means I have to refactor a range of things across the board.

With a low-level language like c, it's pretty important to not have anything break, even if it's not used.

Also, I think that once this bit is finished, we will need to push a 0.+1.0 release, since it's a significant change to the way the graphpass works.

👍 Sounds good, thanks for walking me through this. I think implementing this makes sense, with the recognition that we should note it as a major milestone change.

Also, I think that once this bit is finished, we will need to push a 0.+1.0 release, since it's a significant change to the way the graphpass works.

We should probably push a release with the recent bugs that were fixed, and all the restructuring as soon as possible. If there is going to be a bit of time needed to implement this issue, then we can cut another one after that.

As for output, generally user has control over what to call the output and how to redirect it. stdout is generally printed -- streamed -- out to the console. From there, the user does whatever they want to do with it.

With a low-level language like c, it's pretty important to not have anything break, even if it's not used.

It's so early on here, I don't think it matters. We haven't cut a 1.0.0 were we've declared what the API(s) do. It's worth reading the semver manifesto if you haven't already.

Thanks @ruebot. Let's push a release after the next PR and then another that covers stdin stdout + documentation changes.