Xref: utzoo comp.lang.c:9090 comp.unix.wizards:7670
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!yale!husc6!bu-cs!bzs
From: bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: command line options
Message-ID: <21419@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 10 Apr 88 01:42:42 GMT
References: <2414@zyx.UUCP> <8039@elsie.UUCP> <7628@brl-smoke.ARPA> <143@gsg.UUCP> <7634@brl-smoke.ARPA> <21370@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <7639@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Organization: Boston U. Comp. Sci.
Lines: 30
In-reply-to: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA's message of 9 Apr 88 22:59:28 GMT



From Doug Gwyn...
>Maybe there is no such thing as a good interface for dumb users.
>
>Or perhaps dumb users should be encouraged to put '' around EVERY
>argument to every command, since they don't know what is a special
>shell metacharacter and what isn't.
>
>Personally I don't keep files around with names starting with -.

Or maybe, just maybe, we agree that using -x where 'x' is a shell
meta-character is not a good idea for a standard, universal flag to
appear in every Unix command as the help/usage flag.

C'mon, I ain't talking dumb users, that's annoying to anyone and a
design embarrassment. You've never even accidently found you've
created a file with a name starting with dash? I have, maybe I'm a
dumb user.

I can't believe this needs argument, using a shell meta-character as a
flag for help with a command's usage, it's unbelievable, it's textbook
case bad design, I'll use it in my next systems class lecture on
Tuesday, it's a wonderful example of how *not* to design something.

What's wrong with using "-help" as a special case? Perhaps even with
an option to pass it back and let the calling program handle the help,
actually that could be handled by just having getopt() define a
function usage() and letting the user define his/her own to override.

	-Barry Shein, Boston University