On Thu, Dec 03, 2009 at 02:22:41AM -0500, Greg A. Woods wrote: > > 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 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html