command line options

[Barry Shein]

>From Doug Gwyn...
>Maybe there is no such thing as a good interface for dumb users.
>
>Or perhaps dumb users should be encouraged to put '' around EVERY
>argument to every command, since they don't know what is a special
>shell metacharacter and what isn't.
>
>Personally I don't keep files around with names starting with -.

Or maybe, just maybe, we agree that using -x where 'x' is a shell
meta-character is not a good idea for a standard, universal flag to
appear in every Unix command as the help/usage flag.

C'mon, I ain't talking dumb users, that's annoying to anyone and a
design embarrassment. You've never even accidently found you've
created a file with a name starting with dash? I have, maybe I'm a
dumb user.

I can't believe this needs argument, using a shell meta-character as a
flag for help with a command's usage, it's unbelievable, it's textbook
case bad design, I'll use it in my next systems class lecture on
Tuesday, it's a wonderful example of how *not* to design something.

What's wrong with using "-help" as a special case? Perhaps even with
an option to pass it back and let the calling program handle the help,
actually that could be handled by just having getopt() define a
function usage() and letting the user define his/her own to override.

	-Barry Shein, Boston University