Neil Conway wrote: > Peter Eisentraut wrote: > > --help and --version are the standard options that are supported > > everywhere. In the era before we had long options everywhere, we > > implemented -V as an alternative in some programs, in particular those > > in and around initdb, because of the version cross-checking it does > > using those options. > > Ok, good to know. FWIW "-V" is almost universal among the client > binaries (not just those "in and around initdb"). > > > At one point, long options where broken on some BSD versions. I don't > > know what became of that, but if we don't have new information it might > > be safest to leave things where they are. > > Can anyone confirm this? (If this actually affects any modern platforms > it means that "--help" doesn't work at the very least, which seems a Bad > Thing. So I'm a little skeptical that this is still a problem.)
FreeBSD had a problem with double-dash args but I thought that related to getopt, and I can't remember how that fits in. Maybe we defined '-' in getopt and said it took an argument and tested for '-help' and '-verbose', but now we just check argv right inside main. I can't remember totally. > > Hence, the -V option is not the preferred public interface, so it's not > > prominently documented, which may or may not be reasonable in minds > > other than my own. > > Fair enough, but I think it's inconsistent to document it in some places > but not in others. I think we ought to either declare "-V" deprecated > (and perhaps remove the docs for it), or accept that we need to live > with it because of long-options silliness and document "-V" as a valid > alternate. Agreed. psql --help certainly looks inconsistent --- only --help and --version are long. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Usage: psql [OPTIONS]... [DBNAME [USERNAME]] General options: -d DBNAME specify database name to connect to (default: "postgres") -c COMMAND run only single command (SQL or internal) and exit -f FILENAME execute commands from file, then exit -l list available databases, then exit -v NAME=VALUE set psql variable NAME to VALUE -X do not read startup file (~/.psqlrc) --help show this help, then exit --version output version information, then exit -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us [EMAIL PROTECTED] | (610) 359-1001 + If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073 ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
