Re: Better error message when --single is not the first arg to postgres executable

[Peter Eisentraut]

On 19.06.24 16:04, Nathan Bossart wrote:
What about just inlining --version and --help e.g.
else if (strcmp(argv[i], "--version") == 0 || strcmp(argv[i], "-V") == 0)
{
      fputs(PG_BACKEND_VERSIONSTR, stdout);
      exit(0);
}

I'm fine with being more persnickety about the other options; they are much
rarer and not unixy.

That seems like it should work.  I'm not sure I agree that's the least
surprising behavior (e.g., what exactly is the user trying to tell us with
commands like "postgres --version --help --describe-config"?), but I also
don't feel too strongly about it.

There is sort of an existing convention that --help and --version behave 
like this, meaning they act immediately and exit without considering 
other arguments.

I'm not really sure all this here is worth solving.  I think requiring 
things like --single or --boot to be first seems ok, and the 
alternatives just make things more complicated.