On Fri, Sep 19, 2025 at 03:55:14PM +0200, pourko--- via Bug reports for the GNU
Bourne Again SHell wrote:
> Sep 19, 2025, 06:26 by [email protected]:
> > On Fri, Sep 19, 2025 at 11:40:51AM +0200, Pourko wrote:
> > The bug here seems to be that the "--help" long option provokes a
> > behaviour from some built-ins that is not documented. The built-ins
> > that do this are rightly exiting with status 2, since an invalid option
> > was given,
>
> Not *some*, they all return error code 2.
> And, I don't see anything "invalid" about --help.
>
> > the fact that they *also* output help text seems like a bug to me.
>
> No, the fact that they output help text is because "--help" was asked for,
> and they do support "--help".
Support? I would expect that to be documented. If a utility does not
document an option, how can I be sure what would happen if I used it?
Should I somehow *assume* that "--help" is supported?
>
> > (this also works for built-ins like "[" and "echo" that do not recognize
> > "--help").
>
> Then maybe they should. Both /bin/[ and /bin/echo support "--help".
>
Well, that would surely depend on the OS and its base system tooling,
wouldn't it?
$ /bin/[ --help
[: missing ]
$ /bin/echo --help
--help
--
Matti Andreas Kähäri
Uppsala, Sweden
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