Andy Armstrong wrote:
> Why so verbose?
>
> Aristotle's '::' suggestion is my favourite. It's syntactically clean.
> It's visually distinct from other switches - so you can easily see that
> something special is happing. It's short.
And without context it's totally void of meaning. Someone hit it on the head
earlier in the conversation, we understand what :: (or --) means because we're
all talking about what it means. It's clear because it's in context. Out of
context, '::' means nothing.
The absurdity of :: becomes more clear because you can apply the same
arguments to any switch of prove. Let's use ++ instead of '--color' because
its syntactically clean and visually distinct. Or ;; for --merge.
Short and clean isn't enough. A control has to suggest it's functionality.
:: doesn't even suggest "pass through the following to the test" even after
its been explained. Because of this, :: is among a class of poorly designed
controls you have to learn by rote. For an example of this, just look through
perlvar and think about how often you still have to refer back to it.
At this point I'm making my argument on repeat, so this will be the last time
I say it.
> If you want to be able to flip flop in and out of test args and prove
> args modes just repeat it and say that tests can't use '::' as an arg.
The flip-flop case is an unrealistic bit of complexity. Ignore it.
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