>>>>> John E Davis <da...@space.mit.edu> writes: >>>>> On Sun, 11 Sep 2005 -0400, "Benj. Mako Hill" <m...@debian.org> said:
>> Given a file named with a dash at the beginning (e.g., -.txt,
>> ---.doc, etc.), there's no way (I found) to open such file with most
>> directly. GNU (I think gettext-based, actually) programs have the
>> -- option to stop switch processing; using that most could be
>> invoked as follows: most -- ---.doc.
> While I can add support for "--", it is much easier to use
> most ./-.txt
> instead of
> most -- -.txt
It's a matter of convention. And it's POSIX convention for “--”
to terminate the options' parsing.
While it may seem of a marginal value for interactive use, it's
of some real value when the program is called via exec* ().
Consider that most(1) is to be called as $PAGER from a C
program. To ensure that no filename is ever recognized as an
option, the C program in question will have to prepend a “./”
combo to /each/ of the filenames passed to $PAGER, which is a
real pain to do in C. Furthermore, consider how many there are
C programs which would have to be patched to support this
particular “mode of operation.”
Hence, I'd strongly opt for changing most(1) to conform to the
world, and not vice versa.
--
FSF associate member #7257
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