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On Thu, 25 May 2006 11:04:02 -0700, jrodman@xxxx.xxxxxxxxxx.xxx wrote:
> On Thu, May 25, 2006 at 06:44:38PM +0200, H.Merijn Brand wrote:
> > 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 -?
>
> jrodman@Skonnos:~ >ls -?
> ls: invalid option -- ?
> Try `ls --help' for more information.
>
> There we go. No -?, and the hateful taunt.
>
> In my experience -? was more common in dos environents which I used
> sometimes, so when I want help these days I tend to type
>
> blah -h
> blah -?
> blah --help
>
> while only barely glancing at the blah output to see if it might be
> helpful.
>
> > info pages are useless. Give me plain man pages please, *AND* a useful --help
> > or -?
>
> I know this is the hate list, and typical info content is rather
> hateful, but consider installing 'pinfo', it's somewhat less hateful to
> use than 'info', at least I can reliably quit it without ^Z to suspend
> and kill %2. When a tool is complex enough that I actually need a bit
> more of a manual and less of an options listing, sometimes this stuff is
> useful.
I'm always so annoyed by anything that looks like info, that I decided long
ago to just throw it away after install. I have no info dir's anymore. If the
man pages are not enough, I'm faster in finding what I need to know through
google or other internet resources than when I would need to find it in info.
I've tried most of the info clones, pinfo, info, tkinfo, and probably some
more, but its format and ways to go through the docs is so revolting that I
still just rather throw it away.
--
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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