Re: Git documentation consistency

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Dec 3, 2009, 07:45 UTC
Message-ID: <20091203074500.GA31566@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <m1NG61U-000kn4C@most.weird.com>

On Thu, Dec 03, 2009 at 02:22:41AM -0500, Greg A. Woods wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> > I think you are showing ignorance here, as -? is *not* even close to
> > standard, nor even widely used practice at all.
> 
> I think I should know something about Unix command line and option
> parsers, having used them for some 25 years or so now.  In fact I've
> used most every kind of unix that ever was, and I've worked on the
> source to more than a few.

I don't want to nitpick, because the main thrust of your point (that "git foo --bogus" should show a more useful message) is not affected by this subpoint at all. But if we are considering special-casing "-?", I would like to see some evidence that it is actually in use.

I can't seem to find it respected anywhere, as shown below (and note that yes, some of this output does show a useful help message, but that is because --bogus would show the same message, and I am not disputing that we should handle that case):

# My linux box $ uname -sr Linux 2.6.31-1-686 $ ls -? ls: invalid option -- '?' Try `ls --help' for more information.

# Solaris
$ uname -sr
SunOS 5.8
$ /bin/ls -?
/bin/ls: illegal option -- ?
usage: ls -1RaAdCxmnlogrtucpFbqisfL [files]
$ /usr/ucb/ls -? ;# appears to ignore bogus options entirely?
foo
$ /usr/ucb/fold -?
/usr/ucb/fold: illegal option -- ?
Usage: fold [-bs] [-w width | -width ] [file...]
$ /usr/xpg4/bin/ls -?
/usr/xpg4/bin/ls: illegal option -- ?
usage: ls -1RaAdCxmnlogrtucpFbqisfL [files]
$ /usr/xpg6/bin/ls -?
bash: /usr/xpg6/bin/ls: No such file or directory

# AIX $ uname -svr AIX 1 6 $ /bin/ls -? /bin/ls: illegal option -- ? usage: ls [-1ACFHLNRabcdefgilmnopqrstuxEUX] [File...]

So what systems _do_ treat "-?" specially?

-Peff