On 25 May 2006, at 3:14 PM, H.Merijn Brand wrote:
Nah, we should allow unicode too.
And I stick to my opinion that -? is asking for help.
That's how I grew up in Unix land.
There's a simple solution to this, of course.
For all defined single-letter options, handle them appropriately.
For all undefined single-letter options, return with help details.
-h wouldn't have to be defined or special-cased, because the catchall
would catch it.
Likewise with -?, and everything else for that matter.
Unicode, too!
Good software should be helpful wherever possible, not playing some
childish call & response game of "no, this is the secret handshake,
no wait that is the secret handshake."
But then, I've about given up on finding such pragmatic tools...
--
Chris Devers
P.S. Here's another thought: -h or --help output should confine
itself to a 80x20 text box. That box can optionally specify, say, -hv
or --help --verbose to provide more unbounded documentation
logorrhea, but the default should be short & sweet.
