# The following was supposedly scribed by
# Keith Ivey
# on Thursday 16 June 2005 07:46 pm:
>> Ok. Here's one edge-case which probably involves somebody smart
>> enough to not get stuck in it. Is this really a good argument for
>> perplexing the user the other 99% of the time?
>
>It seems to me that that situation is far more than 1%, more like 99%,
>of the times *when both --foo and --no-foo options are specified*.
Do you mean to say that 99% of the time (when --foo and --no-foo are
both present) that it is because somebody has an alias with a --foo
flag written into it?
Restated: if we counted 100 times that the user used these flags
together, 99 of them would be due to an alias?
Surely not.
>We don't care about the 99% of the time when it's only --foo or only
>--no-foo (or neither), because there's no confusion there.
No, I wasn't talking about that 99%.
>I've read your essay, but I still have no idea what sort of
>non-"programmerly" users you're writing this for.
I used to be one of them. Maybe that means that I had some programmer
in me at the time, but it doesn't change fact that the in-command-order
evaluation of options is a throwback.
>First of all, no one who's not at least a little programmerly is going
>to be using command-line options in the first place.
no one? zero?
>Second, what sort of user is going to be typing "--foo --no-foo"
>(or "--no-foo --foo")? If I did run into that sort of user I'd be
>mystified as to what they intended
If it's not clear what '--no-foo --foo' means then it wouldn't impact
you either way I write it?
The purpose of a negated option is (in all of the usages that I have
seen) to reset any hard-coded or config-file variable.
--Eric
--
"It is a mistake to allow any mechanical object to realize that you are
in a hurry."
-- Ralph's Observation
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