It would be a nice challenge to write a really small getopt()
replacement, and a program that generates usage text. Okay, how about�
usage: program -a [-b] [-c] -f file blah blah blah
No grouping. Should make parsing simplisticr. I guess it�s still a good
idea to let the user choose the order of the arguments?
Can �blah blah blah� be put in between e.g. -a and -b?
The usage above communicates:
-a Required. Must always be set.
-b Optional.
-c Optional.
-f file Required. file must always be a string.
blah blah blah I guess it�s up to the program to decide if this is
optional or required.
But. If we agree that it�s okay that the usage text is unambiguous,
then I can�t come up with one example of an _option_ that would ever
be outputted as _required_. Compare �man fdisk� with �man dmenu�. It
makes sense to separate the optional and the required options in the
fdisk manual page, since they have chosen to show what combinations
that work together. But if we don�t want to communicate that in the
usage text, then all it does is to visually group an option with its
argument.
Compare these:
1. flo -c id -f from -r id -t to -w what what,from-to
2. flo [-c id] [-f from] [-r id] [-t to] [-w what] [what,from-to]
Both of them say exactly the same.
And these:
1. dmenu [-i] [-b] [-l <lines>] [-fn <font>] [-nb <color>] [-nf
<color>] [-p <prompt>] [-sb <color>] [-sf <color>] [-v]
2. dmenu -i -b -l <lines> -fn <font> -nb <color> -nf <color> -p
<prompt> -sb <color> -sf <color> -v
3. dmenu -i -b -l lines -fn font -nb color -nf color -p prompt -sb
color -sf color -v
The first one doesn�t contain less information than the third one.
Received on Tue Aug 17 2010 - 21:36:14 CEST
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