51–60 of 222 posts
> Initially, GNU used the plus (+) to indicate a long option Some tools still use +options, like dig(1).
Also in some cases both -options and +options exist, where +options do the inverse of -options (e.g. dash; I think the old Perl 6 also did the same thing for sub MAIN, though it's now -/options) or a subtle but useful variation of -options (e.g. ImageMagick).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree with getting rid of `--long x`. It's really common to build command argvs programmatically, where you have a string representing some option (such as a file path), and you need to pass that as a long option. With `--long x`, you can do like: char *argv[] = {"my-program", "--config-file", config_file, NULL}; run_command(argv); With only `--config-file=x`, you would have to allocate memory for the option: ch…
If all of this matters so much, don’t use an (interactive) shell.
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Also in some cases both -options and +options exist, where +options do the inverse of -options (e.g. dash; I think the old Perl 6 also did the same thing for sub MAIN, though it's now -/options) or a subtle but useful variation of -options (e.g. ImageMagick).
Dash just implements the behavior specified by POSIX/SUS.
The chronology is wrong. dash-options came before pipes. The first edition already has them while pipes came in the third edition.
du [-s] [-a] [name ...]
ld [-usaol] name ]
ls [-ltasd] name ...
pr [-lcm] nameEarlier quoted context omitted.
> that means we only can keep --long=x Just wondering: why `--long=x` over `--long x`?
`--long x` is potentially ambiguous. `x` could be referring to a file if `--long` doesn't take any options, so parsing it correctly depends on this knowledge. The equals sign removes this ambiguity.
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> One oddity not explained is tar allowing multi options crammed together without any dash, that nobody can ever remember (eg. tar xvf archive.tar) This is a BSDism, and it's deprecated even there. bsdtar allows it for compatibility with old scripts. GNUtar has long-switches for all options, which makes it considerably easier to use and understand, for example: gtar --create --file etc.tar --verbose /etc
> This is a BSDism No, it was like that when Tar was first introduced, as part of Seventh Edition Unix: https://man.cat-v.org/unix_7th/1/tar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_(computing)
> tap [key] [name ...]
> The function portion of the key is specified by one of the following letters ...
For example, "x" to extract.
> The following characters may be used in addition to the letter which selects the function desired
For example, "v" for verbose.
And then you have ImageMagick where the order of flags and options is a science by itself.
EDIT: also why is `ps` default output so useless? With no arguments it only prints a couple processes and that's it. I have no idea what it's supposed to show me. Talk about bad UX.
And then you have ImageMagick where the order of flags and options is a science by itself.
And then you have ImageMagick where the order of flags and options is a science by itself.
Indeed, I passionately hate programs where the order of the options and files/arguments matter just as much as the options themselves.
The exact same holds for ffmpeg command-line.