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According to Adam Jimerson on 12/27/2008 8:36 AM:
>> Thanks for the report. However, coreutils use GNU getopt semantics, where
>> unambiguous abbreviations of long options are recognized. Therefore, you
>> need not type the full name, and can get by with:
>
>> rmdir --i
>
> If that is the case then can that be added to ether the help, man, or
> info pages? I am using openSUSE 11.0 with version 6.11 of the GNU Core
> Utilities and non of those pages said that you can shorten it to just
> --i making me think that I had to type the whole thing.
The info pages would be the right place. This is not specific to
coreutils - ALL clients of getopt_long have this behavior. But you are
indeed correct that enhancing the 'info coreutils "Common options"' page
to mention that most coreutils understand unambiguous abbreviations would
be a nice addition.
Jim, okay to apply this?
- --
Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well!
Eric Blake e...@byu.net
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>From 2efe7849fb3a55bbb3cd2e778d969004c0c43d1e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Eric Blake <e...@byu.net>
Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2008 09:38:09 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] doc: mention long option abbreviation
* doc/coreutils.texi (Common options): Give example of
abbreviating options.
* THANKS: Update.
Reported by Adam Jimerson.
---
THANKS | 1 +
doc/coreutils.texi | 9 ++++++++-
2 files changed, 9 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
diff --git a/THANKS b/THANKS
index d12626c..13faf10 100644
--- a/THANKS
+++ b/THANKS
diff --git a/doc/coreutils.texi b/doc/coreutils.texi
index 9047925..e2ad1e7 100644
--- a/doc/coreutils.texi
+++ b/doc/coreutils.texi
@@ -673,8 +673,15 @@ Common options
must appear before its operands, since in some cases the operands
specify a command that itself contains options.
+Most programs that accept long options recognize unambiguous
+abbreviations of those options. For example, @samp{rmdir
+--ignore-fail-on-non-empty} can be invoked as @samp{rmdir
+--ignore-fail} or even @samp{rmdir --i}. Ambiguous options, such as
+...@samp{ls --h}, are identified as such.
+
Some of these programs recognize the @option{--help} and @option{--version}
-options only when one of them is the sole command line argument.
+options only when one of them is the sole command line argument. For
+these programs, abbreviations of the long options are not recognized.
@table @samp
--
1.6.0.4
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