Xref: utzoo comp.lang.c:9167 comp.unix.wizards:7713
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!umd5!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: <7658@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: 11 Apr 88 19:30:03 GMT
References: <2414@zyx.UUCP> <8039@elsie.UUCP> <7628@brl-smoke.ARPA> <143@gsg.UUCP> <7652@brl-smoke.ARPA> <192@sdeggo.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 12

In article <192@sdeggo.UUCP> dave@sdeggo.UUCP (David L. Smith) writes:
> I don't see anything grandiose about adding "-HELP" into getopt and having
> that return a '?' to the calling program.  Do you?  This would only require
> recompilation to work.

It won't work at all!  -HELP already has a standard meaning and getopt()
supports it: this is equivalent to -H -E -L -P.

> The "-?" would not be useful with those programs like sed and grep which 
> process regular expressions.  

Sure it would, so long as they follow the command syntax standard.
In fact it ALREADY is useful with such commands.