It was thus said that the Great Peter da Silva once stated:
On May 27, 2006, at 6:24 PM, Aaron J. Grier wrote:
On Thu, May 25, 2006 at 01:40:39PM -0500, Peter da Silva wrote:
-? is a MSDOS-ism.
you mean of course /? :)
From MS-DOS 2.11 through MS-DOS 5 there was a variable
On 5/28/06, A. Pagaltzis pagalt...@gmx.de wrote:
* David Landgren da...@landgren.net [2006-05-28 22:25]:
And on a French azerty keyboard layout, the \ needs a right-alt
to get it.
Same holds true for the German QWERTZ layout; it's actually on
the same key as ?, except the ? needs Shift.
Of
On Thu, May 25, 2006 at 01:40:39PM -0500, Peter da Silva wrote:
-? is a MSDOS-ism.
you mean of course /? :)
--
Aaron J. Grier | Not your ordinary poofy goof. | agr...@poofygoof.com
silly brewer, saaz are for pils! -- virt
On May 27, 2006, at 6:24 PM, Aaron J. Grier wrote:
On Thu, May 25, 2006 at 01:40:39PM -0500, Peter da Silva wrote:
-? is a MSDOS-ism.
you mean of course /? :)
From MS-DOS 2.11 through MS-DOS 5 there was a variable SWITCHAR. If
it was set to / (the default) the switch character was / and
-\? is 4 keystrokes, all in annoying places. (Dvorak does - a little
better than QWERTY.)
you sicken me
Bill Page skribis 2006-05-29 3:35 (+0930):
-\? is 4 keystrokes, all in annoying places. (Dvorak does - a little
better than QWERTY.)
you sicken me
Ahhh, the satisfaction... :)
Juerd
--
http://convolution.nl/maak_juerd_blij.html
http://convolution.nl/make_juerd_happy.html
Juerd wrote:
-\? is 4 keystrokes, with all keys but the - in a nice place. On
QWERTY, it would be even worse: all keys would be awkwardly placed.
And on a French azerty keyboard layout, the \ needs a right-alt to get
it. Of course, the azerty layout is hateful in many other ways too.
David
On May 27, 2006, at 5:01 AM, H.Merijn Brand wrote:
OK, I've learned a lot from all the opinions raised in this hate, and
I will
continue to support *both* --help and -? for all my scripts. There is
no
harm nor security issue from the script/program side of that.
And I consider even
H.Merijn Brand skribis 2006-05-27 12:01 (+0200):
Anyway, My plea was not about how shells interpret -?, but that programs
should support it as alias for --help. -\? is still a lot less characters
than --help, and IMHO still evenly clear.
Characters, yes, but my keyboard doesn't have a single
* On 2006.05.27, in 44786e2d.50...@xs4all.nl,
* Rhesa Rozendaal rh...@xs4all.nl wrote:
a...@hates-software.com % bs -?
bs: invalid option -- ?
Try `bs --help' for more information.
a...@hates-software.com % bs -h
bs: invalid option -- h
Try `bs --help' for more information.
On 2006-05-25 at 11:30 -0500, David Champion wrote:
But the larger point is that an exception occurs (-h is not recognized
as an option) which triggers an error message. Given the history of
-h, why should that error not be help itself, rather than metahelp?
Because if the program has to deal
On Fri, 26 May 2006, Michael Ahlers wrote:
As this debate has raged on for nearly a week (or more?) now, I think it
is time we propose a new approach to resolve once and for all this help
switch dilemma.
The way help should work is:
At the shell prompt, prepend man to the name of the
On Fri, 2006-05-26 at 09:46 -0700, Tom Duff wrote:
The way help should work is:
At the shell prompt, prepend man to the name of the command;
hit return;
read the help.
That's how it worked on every BTL UNIX,
thanks mainly to Doug McIlroy. It's
hateful that it doesn't work
On 2006-05-26 at 10:31 -0500, David Champion wrote:
Sure. It also means show me data quantities in pretty MG and GB and
TB values instead of large KB values, and it means hostname in a lot
of programs. There are plenty of cases where it can't be used for help
now, but it doesn't all add up
* On 2006.05.26, in 20060526155250.ga30...@parhelion.globnix.org,
* Phil Pennock phil.penn...@globnix.org wrote:
No, but it does argue against having a default action produce desirable
behaviour, where that action is subject to implementation doing
OK, but...
But that's the behaviour
* David Champion d...@uchicago.edu [2006-05-26 18:50]:
And sometimes also --help, even though I rarely use
--godawful-long-options.
I provide long synonyms for all short options. (Getopt::Long
makes this very easy.) OT1H it helps self-document the code, OTOH
it's also nice for the users. Short
* Phil Pennock phil.penn...@globnix.org [2006-05-26 17:55]:
If a program spews a short synopsis to stderr, and refers to
the real help option, then exits non-zero, for all
unimplemented options, whilst producing --help/whatever to
stdout exiting zero, you have something which makes it clear
* H.Merijn Brand h.m.br...@xs4all.nl [2006-05-26 14:05]:
On Fri, 26 May 2006 03:35:44 -0700, jrod...@hate.spamportal.net wrote:
Here, let me plant a bomb on our shared computer:
touch /tmp/-r
It may take a long time to go off, but if it does, I guess
that's your fault too?
No
On Fri, May 26, 2006 at 02:04:53PM +0200, H.Merijn Brand wrote:
On Fri, 26 May 2006 03:35:44 -0700, jrod...@hate.spamportal.net wrote:
Here, let me plant a bomb on our shared computer:
touch /tmp/-r
It may take a long time to go off, but if it does, I guess that's your
fault too?
No
On Thu, 25 May 2006 12:11:09 -0500, David Champion d...@uchicago.edu wrote:
* On 2006.05.25, in 20060525184438.0926f...@pc09,
* H.Merijn Brand h.m.br...@xs4all.nl wrote:
Huh? I've been using UNIX since 1982. Long enough? I started with System
III,
and then got cought in a job that
On Thu, May 25, 2006 at 06:44:38PM +0200, H.Merijn Brand wrote:
On Thu, 25 May 2006 11:30:20 -0500, David Champion d...@uchicago.edu wrote:
* On 2006.05.25, in 20060525181940.6a7da...@pc09,
* H.Merijn Brand h.m.br...@xs4all.nl wrote:
On Thu, 25 May 2006 09:53:56 -0500 (CDT), sabrina
jrod...@skonnos:~ ls -?
ls: invalid option -- ?
Try `ls --help' for more information.
% ls -?
No match.
% ls -\?
usage: ls [-ABCFGHLPRSTWZabcdfghiklnoqrstuvx1] [file ...]
THAT is what SHOULD happen.
On Thu, 25 May 2006 11:04:02 -0700, jrod...@hate.spamportal.net wrote:
On Thu, May 25, 2006 at 06:44:38PM +0200, H.Merijn Brand wrote:
On Thu, 25 May 2006 11:30:20 -0500, David Champion d...@uchicago.edu
wrote:
* On 2006.05.25, in 20060525181940.6a7da...@pc09,
* H.Merijn Brand
Huh? I've been using UNIX since 1982. Long enough? I started with System III,
and then got cought in a job that involved writing Unic Device drivers for
SLD disks. I've never seen a UNIX command from that time that did not support
-?
Really?
I've never used a UNIX system where that worked.
On Thu, May 25, 2006 at 11:30:20AM -0500, David Champion wrote:
But the larger point is that an exception occurs (-h is not recognized
as an option) which triggers an error message. Given the history of
-h, why should that error not be help itself, rather than metahelp?
OTOH, you really want
But the larger point is that an exception occurs (-h is not recognized
as an option) which triggers an error message. Given the history of
-h, why should that error not be help itself, rather than metahelp?
A larger point is that the error message should be helpful no matter WHAT
the option
Peter da Silva wrote:
But the larger point is that an exception occurs (-h is not recognized
as an option) which triggers an error message. Given the history of
-h, why should that error not be help itself, rather than metahelp?
A larger point is that the error message should be helpful no
H.Merijn Brand h.m.br...@xs4all.nl wrote:
Sorry, I disagree. And I have never liked -h to be help.
IMHO it should be either -? or --help, and -help could be acceptable
-help can't work or you'd never be able to combine options, which is a
long standing unixism for lazy people. (I'm lazy, I
On Thu, May 25, 2006 at 03:28:10PM -0400, Chris Devers wrote:
-h wouldn't have to be defined or special-cased, because the catchall
would catch it.
Disagree.
Even if the generated messages are the same, use of an undefined
option should write a message to stderr, and exit with a non-zero
You have to escape it from your shell? Either you have files whose
name is simply hyphen plus another character in the current directory,
or you have a hateful shell.
I have a shell that allows me to set nonomatch to turn this off.
I do not do this, because having metacharacters sometimes
It was thus said that the Great H.Merijn Brand once stated:
On Thu, 25 May 2006 09:53:56 -0500 (CDT), sabrina downard s...@uchicago.edu
wrote:
If you do not have a better use for -h, and you have coded a usage
statement for --help, then how damned difficult would it be to make -h
H.Merijn Brand skribis 2006-05-25 18:19 (+0200):
IMHO it should be either -? or --help, and -help could be acceptable
-? is silly. In most shells, it's a glob match, and is passed to the
program only if it didn't match.
I couldn't easily find any program that supports -?...
ju...@nano:~$ ls -?
On Thu, 25 May 2006 21:12:39 +0200, Juerd ju...@convolution.nl wrote:
H.Merijn Brand skribis 2006-05-25 18:19 (+0200):
IMHO it should be either -? or --help, and -help could be acceptable
-? is silly. In most shells, it's a glob match, and is passed to the
program only if it didn't match.
H.Merijn Brand skribis 2006-05-25 21:43 (+0200):
ju...@nano:~$ perl -?
Unrecognized switch: -? (-h will show valid options).
ju...@nano:~$ vi -?
VIM - Vi IMproved 6.4 (2005 Oct 15, compiled Apr 28 2006 01:45:37)
Unknown option: -?
More info with: vim -h
ju...@nano:~$ python -?
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