Albert Cahalan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Wed, 2004-08-18 at 13:49, Paul Eggert wrote: >> Albert Cahalan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> >> > Well, so does the --lines option. >> >> No, that uses an allowed extension. It's not prohibited, the way that >> multi-digit options are prohibited. > > Where?
Guideline 3 says "Multi-digit options should not be allowed." That's an explicit prohibition. > You can have a "-W lines=42" option. True. > Guideline 10 seems to require that "head --help" > be interpreted as "head -- help". No, it talks only about the argument "--". "head --help" does not have an argument "--"; it has an argument "--help". > the long options violate guideline 3. I don't see why. Guideline 3 is about short options. > The "head" command is described using the word "follows", instead of > the words "conforms to". (for "head", the standard says "This > standard version of head follows the Utility Syntax Guidelines." I don't know where you're getting that wording. The current edition of the standard says "The head utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines." This is a "shall" constraint on implementations that claim conformance to the standard. It's pretty straightforward. See: <http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/000095399/utilities/head.html> >> > Guideline 11 isn't even a problem at all, unless you >> > artificially make it a problem. >> >> Sure it is. It says that order shouldn't matter unless the options >> are mutually exclusive and one is documented to override the other. >> Hence if options like "-1" are and "-3" are allowed, then "-13" must >> be equivalent to "-1 -3" which in turn should be equivalent to "-3 -1" >> or "-31". I suspect that this problem is part of the reason that >> multi-digit options were disallowed. > > As an implementation-specific option, this is multi-digit. > So there is no ordering problem. OK, I guess I was assuming that we were trying to escape from Guideline 3 by saying that "1" and "3" are single-digit options and "-13" combines them. If we're not trying to do that, then fine, Guideline 11 is not a problem. However, we still run afoul of Guideline 3. > Why would the standard warn that some systems might not be standard? The standard contains several warnings of that sort. It's a pragmatic document. It hasn't been taken over by lawyers (yet :-). > the standard does indeed mention that the utility syntax guidelines > might be violated by some standard-conforming implementation No, it doesn't say that. It doesn't say that such an implementation conforms to the standard. _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils