On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 11:08:23PM -0500, Kirk Strauser typed: > Chris Rees wrote: > > >Traditional: > > > >% tar xzvf bluurgh.tgz > > > >GNU recommended: > > > >$ tar --extract --verbose --gunzip --file bluurgh.tgz > > > >Seriously, why are long options encouraged? > > Scripting. I almost always use long options when writing scripts I > might use again later so that 6 months later I don't have to remember > what some single-letter option meant. I pretty much never use them on > the command line, though.
Agreed, the long options *as an alternative* can be descriptive in scripts, tutorials, howto's etc. The other reason often mentioned, there being not enough letters in the alphabet to cover all possible options, in my opinion advocates bloated software (one program can do it all), which goes against the Unix paradigm of making small programs that do one task exceptionally well and just chaining these together. Ruben _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
