On 28/07/2023 07:12, René Scharfe wrote:
Right. Perhaps --[[no-]no-]doubt? Looks a bit silly with its nested
brackets, but it's more correct, because it documents all three accepted
forms, including the no-less one.
It may look a bit silly but looks very tempting. Also it is not
much longer than "--[no-]no-doubt".
Yes, it's quite compact. But is it they still legible?
--no-index find in contents not managed by git
--[no-]no-index find in contents not managed by git
--[[no-]no-]index find in contents not managed by git
--[no-[no-]]index find in contents not managed by git
The last two document all three variants, but is it still obvious that
the help text is supposed to be about the one with a single "no-"?
That's something that has to be learned, I suspect. No good making the
short help too cryptic. Hmm, how about:
--no-index, --[no-[no-]]index
find in contents not managed by git
I think spelling out the positive and negative options separately makes
it much clearer, but in that case I think we'd be better just to show
--no-index, --index
adding "[no-[no]]" is just going to confuse users. If we had a
convention of "[<short>, ]<positive long>; <negative long>" then I think
it should be clear to users how to negate a given option
-v, --invert-match; --no-invert-match
show non-matching lines
-I, --no-index; --index find in contents not managed by git
Spelling out both versions is a bit verbose but I think it is worth it
to avoid "--[no-]no-index"
One other thought is to mark options that can be negated with a symbol
like '*' and add a footnote saying those options can be negated.
Best Wishes
Phillip
