From owner-cvs-all Fri Jun 25 0:17: 3 1999 Delivered-To: cvs-all@freebsd.org Received: from hcsext.hcs.de (hcshh.hcs.de [194.123.40.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 6F36014D0E; Fri, 25 Jun 1999 00:16:54 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from hm@hcs.de) Received: from hcswork.hcs.de([192.76.124.5]) (2456 bytes) by hcsext.hcs.de via sendmail with P:smtp/R:inet_hosts/T:smtp (sender: ) id for ; Fri, 25 Jun 1999 09:16:21 +0200 (CEST) (Smail-3.2.0.104 1998-Nov-20 #1 built 1998-Dec-11) Received: by hcswork.hcs.de (Smail3.1.29.0 #12) id m10xQDk-0000fqC; Fri, 25 Jun 99 09:16 METDST Message-Id: From: hm@hcs.de (Hellmuth Michaelis) Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/usr.sbin/i4b/isdnd main.c src/usr.sbin/i4b/isdndebug main.c src/usr.sbin/i4b/isdndecode main.c src/usr.s In-Reply-To: <199906250653.AAA42025@harmony.village.org> from Warner Losh at "Jun 25, 99 00:53:31 am" To: imp@harmony.village.org (Warner Losh) Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 09:16:20 +0200 (METDST) Cc: des@flood.ping.uio.no, bde@zeta.org.au, hm@hcs.de, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org, cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org Reply-To: hm@hcs.de Organization: HCS Hanseatischer Computerservice GmbH X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL39 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1361 Sender: owner-cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk From the keyboard of Warner Losh: > : http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007908799/xsh/getopt.html > > I guess I was unclear. This page, as well as our man pages, say that > getopt returns '?' when it encounters a bad option. Neither this web > page, nor our man page, state that it is illegal to have '?' in the > options string, nor do they say that -? is illegal. This is splitting > a very fine hair, This is true, but we're talking about a fundamental feature of every interactive program - getting basic help (and no, not man prog .. ;-) ). IMHO, the flag which is used to get help should not bring an error message back to the user. > I personally think encouraging -? is dangerous given its potential > danger, as others have pointed out Good. I can accept that and switch to using another flag for getting help - BUT i think also that FreeBSD should use this flag consistently for all or most of the programs and it should be documented in a well known and easy to find place. What should the help flag character be ? hellmuth -- Hellmuth Michaelis Tel +49 40 559747-70 HCS Hanseatischer Computerservice GmbH Fax +49 40 559747-77 Oldesloer Strasse 97-99 Mail hm [at] hcs.de 22457 Hamburg WWW http://www.hcs.de To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message