On Thu, 25 May 2006 11:30:20 -0500, David Champion <[email protected]> wrote:
> * On 2006.05.25, in <20060525181940.6a7da...@pc09>, > * "H.Merijn Brand" <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Thu, 25 May 2006 09:53:56 -0500 (CDT), sabrina downard > > <[email protected]> > > 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 > > > equal to --help? Since you're already going to print a damned error > > > telling me to use --help instead? > > > > Sorry, I disagree. And I have never liked -h to be help. > > IMHO it should be either -? or --help, and -help could be acceptable > > It's not a matter of taste. It's a matter of UNIX did that for twenty > years before GNU came by and made all the kids think different. If > you've been using UNIX long and have not completely soaked yourself > in GNUisms, you still just automatically expect -h to work almost > everywhere, and --help to work in many places (but not by any means > most). 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 -? > 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? Not at all. It should be saved for something useful. > Yes: hate. Yes, to all those that only support info pages, and make their -?, --help, or even -h tell us to read the info pages. info pages are useless. Give me plain man pages please, *AND* a useful --help or -? -- H.Merijn Brand Amsterdam Perl Mongers (http://amsterdam.pm.org/) using & porting perl 5.6.2, 5.8.x, 5.9.x on HP-UX 10.20, 11.00, 11.11, & 11.23, SuSE 10.0, AIX 4.3 & 5.2, and Cygwin. http://qa.perl.org http://mirrors.develooper.com/hpux/ http://www.test-smoke.org http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/
