Re: A simple hate today.

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From: H.Merijn Brand
Subject: Re: A simple hate today.
Date: 17:44 on 25 May 2006
On Thu, 25 May 2006 11:30:20 -0500, David Champion <dgc@xxxxxxxx.xxx> wrote:

> * On 2006.05.25, in <20060525181940.6a7da5ce@pc09>,
> *	"H.Merijn Brand" <h.m.brand@xxxxxx.xx> wrote:
> > On Thu, 25 May 2006 09:53:56 -0500 (CDT), sabrina downard <sld@xxxxxxxx.xxx>
> > wrote:
> > 
> > > If you do not have a better use for -h, and you have coded a usage 
> > > statement for --help, then how damned difficult would it be to make -h 
> > > equal to --help?  Since you're already going to print a damned error 
> > > telling me to use --help instead?
> > 
> > Sorry, I disagree. And I have never liked -h to be help.
> > IMHO it should be either -? or --help, and -help could be acceptable
> 
> It's not a matter of taste.  It's a matter of UNIX did that for twenty
> years before GNU came by and made all the kids think different.  If
> you've been using UNIX long and have not completely soaked yourself
> in GNUisms, you still just automatically expect -h to work almost
> everywhere, and --help to work in many places (but not by any means
> most).

Huh? I've been using UNIX since 1982. Long enough? I started with System III,
and then got cought in a job that involved writing Unic Device drivers for
SLD disks. I've never seen a UNIX command from that time that did not support
-?

> But the larger point is that an exception occurs (-h is not recognized
> as an option) which triggers an error message.  Given the history of
> -h, why should that error not be help itself, rather than metahelp?

Not at all. It should be saved for something useful.

> Yes: hate.

Yes, to all those that only support info pages, and make their -?, --help, or
even -h tell us to read the info pages.

info pages are useless. Give me plain man pages please, *AND* a useful --help
or -?

-- 
H.Merijn Brand        Amsterdam Perl Mongers (http://amsterdam.pm.org/)
using & porting perl 5.6.2, 5.8.x, 5.9.x  on HP-UX 10.20, 11.00, 11.11,
& 11.23, SuSE 10.0, AIX 4.3 & 5.2, and Cygwin.       http://qa.perl.org
http://mirrors.develooper.com/hpux/           http://www.test-smoke.org
                       http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/
There's stuff above here

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