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From: guy@gorodish.Sun.COM (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: For comment: problems with toolkit arg processing/philosophy
Message-ID: <33287@sun.uucp>
Date: Fri, 6-Nov-87 19:00:13 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.33287
Posted: Fri Nov  6 19:00:13 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Nov-87 23:36:10 EST
References: <871106083928.4.RWS@KILLINGTON.LCS.MIT.EDU> <127@bacchus.DEC.COM>
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> >	The standard for command-line arguments, adopted by AT&T, Sun, and
> >	the Posix groups, calls for single-character flags only ...
> 
> It is not intended that X only be available on a single operating system.
> There is no single convention that will make everybody happy.

There's not even a single convention on UNIX systems; the "standard" in
question is honored as much in the breach as in the observance.  Neither AT&T
nor Sun have converted every command on their systems to agree with that
convention, and frankly I suspect neither AT&T nor Sun will ever do so -
there's too much history in old commands (care to guess how many shell files
will break if "ed -" stops working?).

The standard in question is more of a convention than a standard.  Nobody will
shoot you if you write code that doesn't adhere to it; some people may curse
you for it, and some may praise you for it.
	Guy Harris
	{ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy
	guy@sun.com