Re: Git documentation consistency
- From
Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
- Date
- Dec 3, 2009, 01:34 UTC
- Message-ID
- <7vaay096ye.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
- In-Reply-To
- <m1NG0O6-000kmgC@most.weird.com>
"Greg A. Woods" <woods@planix.com> writes:
Show 7 quoted lines
> $ ls -? > ls: unknown option -- ? > usage: ls [-AaBbCcdFfghikLlmnopqRrSsTtuWwx1] [file ...] > ... > Most other commands know '-?', and despite > the silliness with GNU Ls, use of '-?' to request summary usage > information is pretty much a de facto standard for unix commands.
I think you are showing ignorance here, as -? is *not* even close to standard, nor even widely used practice at all. I somehow doubt your ls would respond to "ls -X" any differently from "ls -?", but is giving the same canned response to any unknown option.
The "usage: ls [-AaBbC...] [file...]" indeed is much better than abstract "usage: frotz <options> <args>" that does not list what <options> are, but that is a totally different thing. On that point, I think Peff already made a good suggestion of giving the full help text in such a case.