Xref: utzoo comp.lang.c:9086 comp.unix.wizards:7668
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!nrl-cmf!cmcl2!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: command line options
Message-ID: <7640@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: 9 Apr 88 23:08:14 GMT
References: <2414@zyx.UUCP> <8039@elsie.UUCP> <7628@brl-smoke.ARPA> <7630@brl-smoke.ARPA> <8041@elsie.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 12

In article <8041@elsie.UUCP> ado@elsie.UUCP (Arthur David Olson) writes:
>Moral of the story:  using "-?" to try to get messages sometimes won't work.
>That's why we use "=" here at elsie.

-? always works, but if your shell interprets ? as a metacharacter AND
if you have files with 2-character names starting with -, you're advised
to quote the ? character.

= is the name of a useful file on 8th Edition UNIX, so the same argument
could be made against its use for help, as well as the additional
observation that -? functions as a help request as a serendipitious
side-effect of the design of getopt(), so that it already is supported
and neither applications nor getopt() need to be changed to use it.