[Proposal] - Add IO.inspect/2 with a binary as the second argument

[Faisal Alghurayri]

Hello friends,

Thank you for your great work in developing and maintaining Elixir. 🙌

I propose adding another signature to the IO.inspect/2 function where the second argument is a binary:

IO.inspect(something, "This message should get shown in console")

I think this is a small quality of life improvement since the developer won't need to explicitly pass the `label` option to see an associated message.

Best Regards,

Faisal

[Allen Wyma]

There's already a label option in the docs:

IO.inspect(1..100, label: "a wonderful range")

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[Faisal Alghurayri]

Yes. 👍 

I'm proposing:

def inspect(item, message) when is_binary(message)  do
inspect(:stdio, item, label: message)
end

https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/blob/v1.11.4/lib/elixir/lib/io.ex#L421

The reason is just a small quality of life improvement. 😄 Please let me know what you think!

- Faisal

[Austin Ziegler]

Every time I forget to add the `label: ` and get a compile error (which is often), I agree with you. From a developer consistency perspective, though, I’m not as sold on this. With this convenience, people may forget to switch back to the keyword list when they need to add other options like :limit, and try `IO.inspect(something, "Message", limit: 300)`.

-a

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[Christopher Keele]

> From a developer consistency perspective, though, I’m not as sold on this.

I tend to agree, this feels like nice parameter sugar but makes it harder to interface consistently with extended options. Maybe it makes more sense for an application-level helper?

[Faisal Alghurayri]

Thanks for your feedback folks. I see where you are coming from and I can not disagree. 😄

> Maybe it makes more sense for an application-level helper?

Correct. I will do that going forward. 👍

- Faisal

[Leandro Cesquini Pereira]

Using an atom instead of a string will save you some time: IO.inspect(foo, label: :my_var)

Not so direct as an app-level helper but easier to write than a string :)

[nico]

I often do: `IO.inspect(this_is_my_label: my_var)`

The output will be wrapped in a list, but otherwise it is the same as using the label option, without using the second argument.

- Nico Piderman

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[Aaron Ross]

You can save a few more keystrokes by just adding a label to the inspect payload:

    IO.inspect(my_var: foo)

I end up inspecting a map pretty often, when I want to see multiple values at once

    IO.inspect(%{foo: foo, bar: bar})

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[Christopher Keele]

> Thanks for your feedback folks.

Thanks for your proposal, discussions like these are what help keep the language evolving towards better user-friendliness!

[Austin Ziegler]

I do the same when I’m using a standalone `IO.inspect`, but the proposal here would help most with a _pipelined_ inspect (`foo |> IO.inspect("label")`).

I’m still not sure that the positive of using a string to avoid compile errors outweighs the inconsistency and resulting complexity, but that’s where I would want it because that’s where I have this problem most frequently.

-a

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