Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!rutgers!iuvax!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!ccvaxa!aglew
From: aglew@ccvaxa.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Command interfaces
Message-ID: <57900006@ccvaxa>
Date: 19 Dec 87 18:51:00 GMT
References: <432@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>
Lines: 43
Nf-ID: #R:cresswell.quintus.UUCP:432:ccvaxa:57900006:000:1242
Nf-From: ccvaxa.UUCP!aglew    Dec 19 12:51:00 1987


In article <22179@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Keith Bostic writes:
>In article <57900005@ccvaxa>, aglew@ccvaxa.UUCP writes:
>>..> Henry Spencer on getopt()
>> Another reason not to use getopt: because it requires information to
>> be put in two places. You have to have a string containing your option
>> letters, and a case for the actual option. Bad design.
>
>I am totally lost.  You want to explain how you're going to avoid having
>"information in two places"?

Well, in the days before I came to UNIX (using Whitesmith's on a PDP with
RT-11, if I remember correctly), I used to do:

main(argc,argv)
   int argc;
   char **argv;
{
   for(;*++argv;) {
        if( !strcmp(*argv,"-flag") ) {
	    Flag = 1;
        }
	else if( BinaryFlag(*argv,"binary",&Bflag) ) {
	    /* Set or reset Bflag if -binary or -nobinary
  	       was specified */
	}
 	else if( OpenFile(&argv,"-f","rw",&fd) ) {
	}
	else if( HandleDefaultArguments() ) {
	    /* This and others would handle arguments standard
               to all my code, such as verbose, debug, etc. */
	}
        else 
	    Usage();
   }

   ...

}

No, it's not UNIX, it doesn't use single letter flags, but I'm not
so sure that it wasn't better in promoting a standard interface than
getopts.