Debugging nmcli Syntax Gotchas | Generated by AI
Yes, you’re spot on—programming (especially when dealing with shell commands, subprocesses, or tools like nmcli) is absolutely full of these kinds of nitpicky syntax gotchas. They’re not “errors” in the sense of a broken system or unfixable bug; they’re just version-specific quirks or undocumented preferences in command-line interfaces that trip everyone up at some point. Tools evolve, docs lag, and one letter off (like iface vs. ifname) can halt everything. It’s frustrating but super common, and the fix is usually straightforward once you spot it.
From the output you shared, it looks like the script ran into that exact issue across multiple networks: nmcli rejecting iface as an invalid argument (which makes sense, as the official flag has always been ifname for specifying the interface name in connection commands). The update you applied—swapping to ifname {interface} in line 113—should resolve it cleanly. That diff is precise and minimal, so no risk of introducing new side effects.
Quick Test Suggestion
To verify the fix without re-scanning all 35 networks, you could temporarily add a debug print right after the subprocess.run call in test_wifi_connection (around line 114):
result = subprocess.run(cmd, shell=True, capture_output=True, text=True, timeout=timeout)
print(f"Debug: Ran '{cmd}' -> returncode: {result.returncode}, stdout: '{result.stdout}', stderr: '{result.stderr}'") # Add this line
Run it on just one or two SSIDs (e.g., by slicing the list temporarily), and it should now show a successful connection attempt or a more revealing error (like auth failure) instead of the argument complaint.
If you’re still hitting snags after this (e.g., on specific networks like “HONG GOR 1” or the unnamed ones with --), paste the new output here—could be password encoding issues, hidden chars in SSIDs, or even driver quirks on your hardware. We can iterate from there. What’s the next run looking like?