Thanks, Chris
David F wrote:
First off, let me state the facts as I understand them:...
Ok, those are the facts as I understand them, if I am wrong about anything I trust that I will be corrected with expeditious and forthright meanness. :)
I haven't verified your facts, but they sound plausible.
Additionally, I make the following suppositions:
Argument permutation is desierable. Except, of course, when it breaks something.
I agree.
It would be overly burdensome to explicitly enable/disable getopt() features on a case-by-case basis for getopt() using packages that are part of the Cygwin distribution.
Definitely, that wouldn't happen.
And now for some discussion:
I am not familiar with all the details of the evolution of getopt_long(), but I assume that argument permutation was present and enabled by default fairly early. I therefore assume that programs using getopt_long() are either compatible with argument permutatuin or have explicitly disabled it.
So here's the idea: Leave argument permutation disabled by default for getopt() and enabled by default for getopt_long().
This is a win if only because many if not most GNU programs use getopt_long(), especially those in the coreutils package.
This would allow us the convenience of argument permutation for many programs while also maintaining standards compliance and compatibility. Right?
I don't know. If correct, that would be excellent.
So it could work like this:
getopt() would have argument permutation disabled by default and only enabled when POSIXLY_INCORRECT_GETOPT is defined and it is not explicitly disabled by the calling code.
getopt_long() would have argument permutation enabled by default and disabled when POSIXLY_CORRECT is defined or it is explicitly disabled by the calling code.
Does any of this make sense?
(Note that I'm not asking anyone to implement this and I am familiar with the concept of "PTC". For now, I would just like to know what others think.)
I think it makes a lot of sense. It does require someone to put in a fair
amount of time:
1) Resolving the uncertainties you mention. 2) Finding out what permutation broke in the first place. 3) Making the necessary tweaks 4) Verifying nothing is broken.
I think its a worthwhile cause, but I don't have the time to dedicate to it
just right now.
Max.
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