> > In my opinion grep is now doing precisely the right thing: make no > > fuss when it is clear what the end result should be. > > It is not clear at all. The relationship among options is way too > complicated. The complexity is not documented. And it should not be > documented, as that would be a disserverice to the vast majority of > users.
In principle, I am totally against intentionally not documenting features of a program that exist for a purpose other than debugging the program. I also recognize that complicating docs makes them less useful for the average user. One way around it could be to have a 'common usage' section that is somewhat similar to what we have now, and augment it with an 'advanced usage' or 'notes' section that describes the complex interactions between options. The main point is separating the two. How to separate is another issue, and perl docs give some examples. E.g., we could have 2 man pages, with basic one referring to the advanced one in the 'see also' section. Cheers, TAA ----------------------------------------------------- Tony Abou-Assaleh Lecturer, Computer Science Department Brock University, St. Catharines, ON, Canada, L2S 3A1 Office: MC J215 Tel: +1(905)688-5550 ext. 5243 Fax: +1(905)688-3255 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] WWW: http://www.cosc.brocku.ca/~taa/ ----------------------[THE END]----------------------
