Grant Edwards wrote:
> Nicolas Williams wrote:
> > Right. There's no good convention for "end of list of arguments to an
> > option". There's only a good convention for "end of variable argument
> > list" ('--'), and since this is the closest thing...
>
> And since there _is_ a convention that '--' ends the option list, it's
> A Bad Thing(TM) to use it for something else. I think violating the
> almost universal convention about what '--' means is a terrible idea,
> but apparently we're now stuck with it.
Having just happened upon this myself I am now one of the many saying
that mutt has made a terrible mistake with this implementation. The
'--' is an end of option argument processing. It should not be used
as an end of list marker. It should be used as an end of argument
option marker.
> The standard way to pass a list of filenames on a command line is to
> do it indirectly by putting the filenames in a file, and passing that
> filename. That seems to work fine for dozens (or hundreds) of other
> programs, so I don't see any reason why mutt shouldn't follow that
> convention.
The problem mutt is facing is one of in-band-control. The marker
needs to not match any filename. But what if you have a file named
"--"? (Don't laugh. People do things like this. And then then ask
how to remove it. Really! ["rm -f ./--", or "rm -f -- --") It is
hard to do in-band-control well. Especially on Unix-like filesystems
where the only two invalid characters are the null character and slash.
One way is just to assume that a particular filename will never be
supported. Something like "--" but "--" is a terrible choice.
I would have preferred that "+" were chosen.
mutt -a * + j...@example.com
That seems to have a low likelihood of collision with a real filename.
It is used by 'find' and standardized by POSIX. As in this example
"find . -exec echo {} +". And so isn't completely unknown elsewhere.
But since only null and slash are invalid perhaps that is the best clue.
mutt -a * / j...@example.com
Ugly. But seems least ambiguous to me. And it avoids the in-band
control problem.
Bob
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