commandline syntax

[ANM]

>>>>> "Dave" == Dave Dykstra <dwd at lucent.com> writes:

[snip]

 Dave> I agree that ps and tar are bad models.  The only reason that
 Dave> "-" is deprecated on GNU ps, as the man page says, is so in the
 Dave> future they can distinguish between System V style options and
 Dave> BSD style options.  Besides, you're not proposing removing the
 Dave> hyphens on the short options, you're proposing removing the
 Dave> double-hyphen on the long options.

 Dave> A better example perhaps is cvs, which has options and
 Dave> "commands".  Gpg also makes that distinction, but commands all
 Dave> use the syntax of options.  It may make sense to remove the
 Dave> double-dash on just the long form of commands.

Concidering what Dave is saying here, I agree that if the intent is to
differentiate between commands and options then a non GNUish -- lead is
not required, as you say Dave, in CVS. But here one needs to note the
distinctions between general options and command options which may
make things a tad confusing, (eg: cvs -z3 update -P).... Maybe they
are already confusing... what the heck?

Anthony