command line options

[Barry Shein]

Doug Gwyn writes
>In article <21419 at bu-cs.BU.EDU> bzs at bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) writes:
>>What's wrong with using "-help" as a special case?
>
>I explained how you could exploit a feature that is ALREADY PRESENT
>and you keep missing the point.  -help does not currently work.

I don't miss the point, I don't see the difficulty in fixing something
that's broken:

	if(strcmp(flag,"-help") == 0)
		return(usage()); /*usage() can be redefined by the programmer*/

I don't find the fact that -? (or -\? or '-?') happens to work
wonderfully compelling, I guess you do, so we disagree.

Ok, let me put it this way, if -? happens to work, fine, I wouldn't
suggest undoing it (I assume -* and -[ and -] etc work also) but if
one line of code is touched to codify that idea it ought to be
something like I suggest and shell metacharacters should be avoided in
getting help. It wouldn't undo the original idea, just make it useful.

	-Barry Shein, Boston University