Subject: Re: bug#11987: peace and happiness will spread more widely once coreutils...
From: Eric Blake <[email-masked]>
To: Marcel Partap <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2012 07:01:40 -0600
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

retitle 11987 use of -h and -V
tag notabug
thanks

On 07/19/2012 06:35 AM, Marcel Partap wrote:
> ..more thoroughly supports the short options -h and -V for --help and
> --version respectively.

GNU Coding Standards require '--help' and '--version', but do not
require -h or -V (in fact, is -v or -V the more common abbreviation?).
We'd rather not burn short option letters on these, since we risk
collisions with future standardized uses of those short options for
other reasons.

> Or are there convincing arguments in favor of f.e. *date -h* telling
> people to try harder asking for help?
>> date: invalid option -- 'h'
>> Try `date --help' for more information.

Yes, there is a convincing argument - future POSIX may standardize 'date
-h' to mean something else, and we don't want to get in the way of that
potential addition.

I'm going to close this bug out, but you can feel free to continue to
add arguments if you think you can be convincing enough to change our minds.

-- 
Eric Blake   [email-masked]    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org