> The -p option for dladm's set-linkprop and show-linkprop doesn't add > value for me. Today, dladm's syntax is "dladm command -p prop=val > link". I think it would easier to just have "dladm command prop=val > link". Especially because -p is used elsewhere in dladm for producing > parseable output.
In general, the UIRB guidelines advise against having multiple parameters that don't have an option letter because users get confused by the order (is it "getent ent hosts" or "getent hosts ent"). Here, uniformity with other dladm commands would say it's "dladm show-linkprop prop link" but the subcommand name would suggest it's "dladm show-linkprop link prop", and show-proplink doesn't make much sense. As the engineer responsible for the work that introduced the linkprop subcommand format, I assure you that the "-p" / "-c" issue caused more than one sleepless night and it's still not something I'm happy with, but even now I still find all of the alternatives to be worse. (And FWIW, if other dladm subcommands were not already cast in stone, I would've used -P uniformly for parsable output and dodged the "-c" grottiness.) -- meem
