> On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 12:13:45AM -0500, Ted Unangst wrote:
> > The synopsis for -c is dreadfully confusing. it's a mode, not an
> > option. as such, all the other stuff isn't available.
> >
>
> i see it's already done, so i'm late to the party. but i'll add my
> thoughts anyway.
>
> i dislike this. i dislike splitting SYNOPSIS up. it is not SYNOPSIS' job
> to tell you how to to use a utility. it is the text in the man page that
> is meant to do that.
>
> what's the problem? why, take a gander over to ssh-keygen(1) and see the
> way our pages are headed. see? yuck. and it's not just that - the syntax
> is simply not good enough to allow us to describe every permutation.
> you're just rewriting a lie. SYNOPSIS always lies. i don;t see why folks
> have such a hard time accepting this.
>
> so the problem is your method does appear, on the surface, clearer for
> simple usage cases. but when the utility gets more complex, it gets very
> ugly. so then we're left with some pages do it one way, others do it
> another way. and extra verbosity.
>
> i hate it.
Well, three of us got fooled by it in one day.
try this:
sha -c SHA256 *
What does it do? It does something very unexpected.
Another option we can go to is:
md5 [-bprtxc] [-h hashfile] [-s string] [file ...]
Because -c DOES NOT TAKE A LIST OF FILES!
'c' is just a mode change, and then the file list at the end
means something entirely different.
>From the code:
optstr = "bch:pqrs:tx";
See? It is c, not c:
