command line options

[David L. Smith]

In article <7639 at brl-smoke.ARPA>, gwyn at brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) writes:
 > In article <21370 at bu-cs.BU.EDU> bzs at bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) writes:
 > >Oh, brilliant idea. I just tried it under bourne shell and if you
 > >happen to have a file that starts with a dash then you lose also as it
 > >expands. Nothing like magical behavior in a HELP command...
 > >	..hmm, lessee, how do I get rid of this stupid file "-r"
 > >	in my directory? guess I'll just use help...oops...
 > >lose lose. My candidate for this year's cream-pie-in-the face award
 > >for dumb user interface designs.
 > 
 > 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 -.
 
Geez Doug, get up on the wrong side of the keyboard?  I don't keep files
around that start with - either, but I have created them by mistake on
occasion.  If we're not perfect we shouldn't be allowed to us Unix?

The point here is that it's stupid to make something that should be used
commonly (the -? to get usage) be confusing and frustrating to use.  We've
already gone through it with ! style mail addressing when using csh (and @
style addressing when your erase characters are set to the old defaults of
"@" for kill line).  There's a basic flaw in this little scheme, why doesn't
everyone just admit it and come up with a better idea?


-- 
David L. Smith
{sdcsvax!jack,ihnp4!jack, hp-sdd!crash, pyramid, uport}!sdeggo!dave
sdeggo!dave at amos.ling.edu 
Sinners can repent, but stupid is forever.