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 <[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 -?
jrod...@skonnos:~ >ls -?
ls: invalid option -- ?
Try `ls --help' for more information.
There we go. No -?, and the hateful taunt.
In my experience -? was more common in dos environents which I used
sometimes, so when I want help these days I tend to type
blah -h
blah -?
blah --help
while only barely glancing at the blah output to see if it might be
helpful.
> info pages are useless. Give me plain man pages please, *AND* a useful --help
> or -?
I know this is the hate list, and typical info content is rather
hateful, but consider installing 'pinfo', it's somewhat less hateful to
use than 'info', at least I can reliably quit it without ^Z to suspend
and kill %2. When a tool is complex enough that I actually need a bit
more of a manual and less of an options listing, sometimes this stuff is
useful.
-josh
