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From: | J. Grant |
Subject: | Re: [Fwd: cat: invalid option -- h] |
Date: | Sat, 17 Sep 2005 19:09:40 +0100 |
User-agent: | Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; GNU/Linux i686; en; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050513 Debian/1.7.8-1 |
Hi, On 17/09/05 18:31, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
address@hidden removed from CC] So why should cat be any different? Just because two extreme cases support -h as a alias for --help, doesn't mean that it is a GNU convention. You still haven't given a good reason why -h should be a alias for --help.
It is a common getopt option to trigger command line help, the most common I suggest. --help is the most common getoptlong option in GNU. Perhaps there is a GNU standard which covers this aspect of programs user-friendly-ness.
-h is quite uncommon as a alias for --help in GNU programs, and --help is not that frequently used to warrent a short-option for --help. Infact, just in binutils, objdump uses -H as a alias, -h is a alias for --section-headers. Frankly, adding -h as a alias for --help only causes confusion for users, and any such alias should be removed.
We'll all have to remember to use --help long option if -h is not going to be consistent then. We can agree to differ on that if you cannot agree with my proposal.
Kind regards JG
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