Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!longway!std-unix
From: kingdon@ai.mit.edu (Jim Kingdon)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Re: 1003.2: command name changes
Message-ID: <527@longway.TIC.COM>
Date: 3 Feb 90 23:48:43 GMT
Sender: std-unix@longway.TIC.COM
Reply-To: kingdon@ai.mit.edu (Jim Kingdon)
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Approved: jsq@longway.tic.com (Moderator, John S. Quarterman)

From: kingdon@ai.mit.edu (Jim Kingdon)

    My recommendation for years has been that vendor additions be confined
    to upper case, leaving lower case options for the (gradually growing)
    standard environment.

But this way every time an option gets standardized, all
implementations and users have to change.  This does not accord with
"minimal changes to existing practice".  Long options (e.g. "ls +all
+format long" (or "ls +all +fo l" if those abbreviations are
unambigous) instead of "ls -al"), however, are less likely to conflict
with each other, so this is the way to go particularly for options
not used interactively or options rarely used.

Volume-Number: Volume 18, Number 40