Subject: Re: bug#13737: Add -h option to 'users'

From: anatoly techtonik <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2013 10:31:36 +0300

On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 8:45 AM, Bob Proulx <[email-masked]> wrote:

> severity 13737 wishlist
> tag 13737 + wontfix
> thanks
>
> anatoly techtonik wrote:
> > It is very inconvenient to type --help every time when you need to read
> > help. It will be useful to have -h shortcut (a de-facto standard in a
> > Python world and probably scripts in other languages).
>
> You can already use "--h" as a short abreviation for "--help" since
> that is a unique combination.
>

I don't understand your argument about "unique combination". The main issue
is that people like me expect -h to work as a --help shortcut. They don't
have a chance to know "--h" without reading the docs, so --h is not useful.
And by the way - this --h is not documented.

>   $ users --h
>
> Give that a try and please report back your comments concerning it.

Above.

The bar for adding new short options to the utilities is very high.

Sorry, but it is an argument. It will be interesting to know why though.

> Also the users command doesn't have a complicated usage syntax.

Actually, it is. I expected it to give me this information:
cut -d: -f1,3 /etc/passwd | egrep ':[0-9]{4}$' | cut -d: -f1

But it gives something else, so to understand what it actually does, I have
to read the help. This is a complicated usage, because it is possible to
have one step faster help access instead of two step. This also have a
complicated usage (not "usage syntax"), because it doesn't match to the
users expectations towards shell command.

To confirm that argument we'd have to run the poll - if the users expect -h
to work as --help by default. Do you know where we can run it? Does Debian
provide any kind of voting system for users/contributors?

 In
> order to add -h it would need a pretty strong justification.
> Therefore I have tagged this as a wishlist and wontfix as a default
> answer unless there is an opposition champion.
>

I am here. =)